


Four Weddings and a Funeral

by Antosha



Series: Burrowing [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Babies, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Garp Sex, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Multi, One Big Happy Weasley Family (Harry Potter), Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Post-War, The Burrow (Harry Potter), Tragedy/Comedy, Wakes & Funerals, Wedding Night, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23743555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: School is finished, the battles are over, and it's time to get on with the future. (Post-war. Written pre-HBP)
Relationships: Anthony Goldstein/Daphne Greengrass, Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley, Gabrielle Delacour/Mafalda Prewett, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Katie Bell/Angelina Johnson/Alicia Spinnet/George Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Ron Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks/Charlie Weasley, Penelope Clearwater/Percy Weasley, Susan Bones/Fred Weasley
Series: Burrowing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708984
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron and Harry talk in the Burrow’s garden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first part of the follow-up story cycle to The Weasley Family Picnic. Thanks to hhbarmaid and the_dilemma for the wonderful beta work!

_1 July, 1998_

He knows where to find Ron: sitting on the bench in the garden where he and Ginny had seen them share what Harry was fairly certain was their first kiss.

And there he is, looking out over the runner beans, his red hair giving off the faintest flame of color in the moonlight. Not wanting to startle his friend, Harry walks to the bench, leaning heavily on the damned cane, and sits down slowly beside him.

Ron doesn't move.

"Nervous about tomorrow?" Harry asks.

"Nervous," mutters Ron. "I'll tell you, Harry... I have no idea how I feel. I'm not feeling a bloody thing."

Harry finds himself putting his arm over his friend's shoulder, something that would never have occurred to him before. There are so many things that it occurs to him to say, and so many of them are just... wrong. Finally he settles on the one thing that he can think to say that seems appropriate. "You must miss her."

Ron gives a small start, and Harry can feel his shoulder muscles contract. "Miss?..." He gives a moan of such longing that it comes near to breaking Harry's heart, a heart that has been tested sorely of late. "Bloody hell, yes, I _miss_ her. _Merlin_ , I miss her!" Tears are beginning to well up in Ron's eyes, and Harry is split between being sorry he said a thing and being glad that his friend is letting some of the feelings boil over.

And if anyone knows how it feels to have too much emotion inside of you, it's Harry Potter.

Still staring out over the beans and the sunflowers, his voice quavering, Ron goes on. "She's at her parents'. I wish I could go down and see her, but... Tomorrow." He nods, and Harry joins him. "Did you know they were Catholic? The Grangers? I... didn't know that." Ron's chest begins to heave, and he is plainly bawling now. "I should have _known_ that, Harry! How could I not have known that?"

"Ron," Harry says weakly, and his tall friend collapses against his shoulder. "Ron, it's okay, it's going to be okay..."

" _NO_!" Ron howls, his fingers bruising Harry's chest where he's clutching at Harry's jumper. "It's not bloody okay, it won't fucking be okay! There's all these things about her I don't know and won't know and now I'll _never_ know!" He looses a wolfen howl into the still night, and Harry knows that Ginny is at her open window back at the Burrow, hearing this, knowing the grief that is pouring out of Ron as he wails into Harry's chest is twisting her heart as it is twisting his. He told her she shouldn't come out, that Ron would never allow himself to be weak in front of anyone in the family, not even her.

Now he's not so sure it was such a good idea.

Weeping women Harry has learned to deal with. But this is something different. His hulking, shaggy-haired friend, sobbing with abandon. Harry finds the tears beginning to spill, gobbets of fire, and he clutches Ron's head against him and adds his own grief.

He hasn't cried like this since the first time he and Ginny made love, and he can't imagine a more different circumstance, excepting, of course, that each occasion took place on a summer's night in Ottery St. Catchpole in the company of a red-headed Weasley that he dearly loved...

He sees her: brave Hermione; brilliant Hermione. Beautiful Hermione, though it had never occurred to him to think of her in that particular way before this night. The shy smile when she'd done something clever or naughty. The angry tears when he or Ron were being stupid. That time fourth year when he'd just played peek-a-boo with the dragon and Ron started talking to him again and she'd thrown her arms around the two of them and wept like a madwoman.

Watching her curled up on this very bench with Ron, feeling their first embrace like the subliminal tolling of some enormous bell.

It seems somehow impossible that someone that unique, that precious, could be gone. Could be dead.

But she is. Dead.

"Why?" Ron moans, and Harry has no answer. And they are both wailing again, and Harry can feel Ron's sorrow and his own pulling him, Harry, to shreds, the small pieces of him that had survived the past few days intact disintegrating.

Fuck you, he finds himself screaming. In his mind? Out loud? To himself? To Tom Riddle? To Draco Malfoy, who had died with the grin he'd worn killing her still on his face. Fuck you.

"Harry," Ron splutters, "you need to know. You need to know. We'd talked about it, her and me, we'd... we'd... known that one or both of us might die protecting your back and we were willing to do that, we'd do anything for you, you know that..." His face twists, and Harry feels like throwing up. Funny, he thinks. And here I always thought it would be _me_. "But _why_? Why did she have to.... Malfoy meant that curse for _me_! How could she bloody _do_ that?"

"'Cause she _loved_ you, you stupid bloody plank," Harry finds himself yelling. "Because she couldn't imagine the world without you. And because she knew you'd have done the same."

Ron's face screwed up in torment. "I... I... would have. But... I _didn't._ I didn't. And she's dead, she's fucking dead and I can't stand it, Harry, how can I live?"

Harry grabs his friend's huge ears and pulls his head up. "Because that's what you do, Ron. Trust me. I know this. It's horrible and miserable and you don't think you'll ever be able to do anything. But in a few months you'll find yourself doing something for a whole five minutes before you even think, 'Hermione would have hated this' or 'I can't believe she's dead.' Another six months and it'll be a half hour. A year or so, and you'll go a couple of days between moments that smack you on the side of the head like a Beater's bat."

Ron looks up, but he's not looking at Harry. "It's not going to go away, Harry. I'm never going to forget."

"No," Harry sighs, recognizing the set of Ron's chin for the warning it is. "No, you're not."

Scorpio is clearing the top of Stoatshead Hill on the horizon.

"Ron," Harry says, sudden inspiration coming to him, "you should talk to Luna."

His friend screws up his features in frank disbelief.

"I know," Harry says, "I know she seems odd, but she's really nice. She was the one person who I could talk to after... after Sirius died. Her mum died when she was a kid..."

"I remember," Ron says, barely above a whisper. "She was over here a lot in those days. Used to sit up in Ginny's room like a ghost. It was horrible."

"Yeah, well, she understands, Ron. She knows what it's like to have to deal with death. And she was really... helpful."

"The way she looks at me sometimes gives me the wobbles."

"Talk to her, Ron. She'll help, I promise."

Ron sniffs. His head is resting in Harry's lap, and Harry finds himself stroking his friend's hair, just as he has Ginny's for the past couple of days, trying to still _her_ tears. Ron barely seems to notice. Perhaps it helps Harry more than either redhead. "When did you fall in love with Ginny, Harry?" Ron asks, his eyes back on the flowers.

"I... you mean _really_ , or when did I notice?"

"Both, I guess."

"It really happened when she told bloody Draco off at Flourish and Blotts, before her first year. It was the first time I'd heard her voice since we got on the train the previous year, and she was just... something, you know? It might even have been first year, watching her run after the train, waving at you and the twins...."

"She was waving at you," Ron muttered.

"Me? Go on."

"You. The twins told me about it--I wasn't even in the compartment yet. But she was running ahead of where they were. It was you."

Looking up at the Pleiades, Harry can feel his chest suddenly become too small. "Bloody hell. What a berk I am. Any way, I came to my senses in slow increments during fifth and sixth year. While she was dating Michael Corner and Dean. And I found myself thinking how bloody lucky they were. By the time Ginny and I watched you and Hermione snogging out here on the bench the summer before sixth year..."

"You _watched_ us?" Ron groans.

For the first time in what feels like years, Harry laughs. "Yeah, from the kitchen. And I looked over at your sister, Ron, and I... don't get offended here, but I realized she was the most beautiful girl in the world, standing there in her shredded bathrobe, and I hoped I could find with her what you and Hermione had found..."

Ron is crying again, but not sobbing. Just tears flowing down his nose and onto Harry's trousers.

"Ron," Harry says, when he realizes just what Ron wants him to ask, "when did you fall in love with Hermione?"

Ron smiles sadly. "Not first year, I can tell you that. No, it must have happened some time during second year, but when I realized, it was when I brought that Lockheart git up to the Hospital Wing after we... _you_ got Ginny up from that Chamber mess. I went in with him, and Mum and Dad were settling Ginny, and Percy was with Penny, who was awake and babbling away. But I realized the only person I wanted to see was the girl with the fluffy hair and the buck teeth. I shoved old Gilderoy down into a chair and ran over to her. I was worried because the other victims were all awake, and I was about to call Madame Pomfrey over, when I felt her hand tighten around mine, and she looked up and said--didn't ask, said--'You figured it out!' And all of a sudden we were hugging each other right there in the middle of the ward, but I didn't care, because I was so happy that she was okay." Now Ron is sobbing again, and Harry can only keep running his hands through his friend's hair.

"I know, Ron." There's not a whole lot else to say.

When the sobbing has subsided again, they sit there silently for a while, Ron's head in Harry's lap. After some time, Harry asks the logical next question: "What took you so long?"

Ron's face twists again in confusion. "What, you mean, to tell Hermy?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Harry... I mean, come on."

"It's okay, Ron. I've admitted _I_ was a stupid bloody plod. But you _knew_. So... for instance, why didn't you ask her to the Yule Ball fourth year?"

For a moment, Harry flinches, thinking he's gone too far. Why did he ask that? Ron goggles at him. Slowly, his friend answers, "You're joking, right? I mean, you _know_ why I didn't ask her till it was too late, don't you?"

Knowing he is walking through a minefield, Harry offers what he has always thought was the truth: "You were scared she'd say no?"

Again, Ron stares at him, face slack with astonishment. "Harry... You didn't know?"

"Know?" Now Harry is worried--where is this headed, and can he duck fast enough if Ron explodes? "Know... what?"

"Harry...." Ron peers at him intently. "You... you really didn't know what was going on?"

Now Harry feels his temper beginning to flare. Ron has lost a lot in the last few days, but so has he, and he has to swallow the urge to snap at his friend. "No. Ron. I. Guess. I. Didn't."

In the silver-blue evening light, Ron loses what little coloration that his face had held; his freckles and the circles under his eyes stand out in relief. "Bloody hell, Harry. I... I always thought you were just being a good friend, you know... and a gent, the way you always were to Ginny and all the others...."

"What are you talking about, Ron?" It is becoming difficult to keep the dragon at bay. "A gent? I have no fucking clue..." Suddenly it all comes to him, clear and cold as the starlight that etches the garden in stark relief around them. "Oh, bloody hell."

"You really didn't know?" Ron is sitting up against the arm of the bench, staring at Harry. "I... Un-fucking-believable. I always knew. And she knew I knew. She... she told me you hadn't a clue, but I always thought she was being, I dunno, daft and modest. You really didn't know she had a thing for you?"

"NO," Harry moans. "I wouldn't have... Oh, god, Ron, I feel... I'm so sorry..." Harry's stomach is roiling dangerously. After everything that has happened in the past week--not to mention all of the potions he's been forced to drink--this new revelation has him very close to vomiting all over Molly Weasley's beautiful beans. He tries to regulate his breath. "Bloody hell, Ron. I didn't... I feel horrible."

His friend swats him gently with a huge hand. "Don't. She'd gotten over that long before I ever asked her out. And it's not like she ever stopped caring for you."

Harry has managed to slow his breath, but now he is getting light-headed from breathing so deeply. "How... could I not know that... about my best friend... other than you?" he gasped. "But... you knew?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean, the first time you landed in hospital, the end of first year, first time we were allowed to visit, she threw herself on top of you. I had to pull her off you before Madam Pomfrey tossed us out. And then she started blubbering about how wonderful you were and all that, and, you know, stuff I could understand, but then it turned in to talking about how beautiful you were and all the rest of it. Kind of embarrassing, you know? I mean, bloody hell, we were what? Twelve?"

Harry let out a sad laugh. "I can't believe I never noticed." Suddenly he remembers something Ron said. "Wait.... You said I was a gent to 'Ginny and all the others...' I mean, I know I kind of went out with Luna and Daphne sixth year. But there was only Cho before Ginny, right? And I didn't exactly act like a gent toward her, did I?"

"Well, as much as she deserved..." Ron squints. "Merlin, Harry, Hermione said you were thick, but... Uh, you were a quite a heartbreaker these last four years. I mean, you'd known about Ginny, right?"

Harry groaned. "Right. But only because you told me."

"Oh. Well, you were always so respectful to her, and the others, you were the same, so I figured..."

It seems as if Harry's only appropriate response involves cradling his head in his arms. "Who?"

"Well, there were a bunch... But the ones who actually came and talked to me and Hermy... Um. Susan all through fifth year, before she and Neville started up. And Orla Quirke and Siobhan Fawcett sixth and seventh. Um, Daphne, obviously, though she was all Slytherin and snarky about it. Was she any fun to snog, by the way? Not Luna, so I never did figure out what the hell you were doing with her. I thought you were already in love with Ginny?"

Harry just moans.

"Eloise Midgen. Su Li, which annoyed Seamus no end. Padma and Parvati had a regular catfight one night while you were training with Dumbledore sixth year. And... uh... yeah. Most of the younger girls in the DA. And a couple of the boys. Theo Nott. Colin."

Harry collapses beneath his own arms, moaning. "Oh, hell. Why didn't the two of you just... I dunno... kick me or something? God! What did Hermione think? What did _Ginny_ think?"

A low grunt of amusement rumbles up from Ron's gut. "Hermione loved it. She got to tell them all what a berk you are." When Harry looks up, pained astonishment on his face, Ron actually laughs. "Come on, of course not. She told them all you were a bit.... distracted. Fighting the Dark Bunghole. And from the time you and Cho had your dust-up about Marietta--oh, she was another one--we both started telling everyone you were in love with someone, but we couldn't say who."

"You _what_?"

"Harry, you didn't see yourself looking at Ginny. You didn't see the way your face got all white when she invited herself down to the Department of Mysteries. If I hadn't been scared out of my nut, I'd have been dancing for joy."

Now it is Harry's turn to laugh. "Yeah, well, _Ginny_ wasn't exactly dancing, was she? Nearly bit my head off when I tried to tell her..."

"Can you blame her?"

"No. I can't blame her at all." Harry looks over to his friend. "Ron... was, you know, _that_ why you were so angry with me during the whole tournament thing fourth year?"

Shaking his head, Ron still can't manage actually to deny what Harry is saying. "Well...." The eyes look as if they might well up again. Well done, Potter. "Not at first. But yeah, after a bit. It was watching the two of you... I mean, she talked with me too, but she wasn't taking long, cozy walks around the lake with _me_. I'd sit up in the tower, watching you till you'd go behind the trees, knowing for a fact that she would have done _anything_ for you if you only asked. Wanting to kill you. Wanting to kill her. Wanting to kill myself."

"Ron, god."

"And then that dragon, watching you _fly_ , and she was climbing into my shirt, and--terrified for you, yeah--but really having to concentrate on not wanting to climb into _her_ shirt..." Ron looks up and lets out a long breath. "That's why I couldn't ask her to the Ball. 'Cause I felt like an utter arse as it was. And I knew she... liked you. I figured she'd go with you."

"Ron..."

"I wasn't ready, Harry. Neither was she. By the time we came together... Well, it was time, you know?" With his large mitts he rubs his face emphatically. "Harry... Um. Something stupid. I need you to know."

Steeling himself again for whatever may come, Harry says, "Sure, Ron. What?"

"The ring." A diamond set with rubies on gold: Gryffindor colors. "I asked the Grangers if... if she could be wearing it."

Why is it that, having been weeping at the idea of Hermione's death for the past half hour, the idea of her being lowered into the ground still seems somehow unreal? "Good," Harry mutters.

Ron's hands are working together now, as if trying to clean something from them. "I'll still pay you back."

Oh. Bloody hell. "Ron. You... Don't. The ring is something between you. I don't need the gold."

Ron suddenly seems to swell without having actually moved, as if an engorgement charm has been placed on him. "I pay my debts."

"Of course you bloody do. But Ron, I owe you and Hermione more than all the gold my parents and Sirius left me could ever possibly repay." Harry finds himself talking to his knees now, but he knows his friend is listening intently. "I owe you my life. I owe you more."

The air seems to have leaked out of the gangly redhead again, leaving him lank against the bench. He's staring at an ant that's making it's way through the gravel of the path with a crumb of some sort in its mouth. "Yeah," he says. "Well."

The ant is joined by several others. Someone must have been eating out here on the bench.

With a long sigh, Ron changes the subject. "I feel rotten that I've been so wound up about Hermy that I can't even be fussed to worry about my own brother."

"Ginny's been crying about the same thing, about how she's been so upset about Fred that she hasn't had the room to grieve for Hermione. Or Neville." Only so much room in a human heart, Harry thinks. Even a Weasley heart.

"Merlin," Ron mutters wetly. "Neville. He was bloody brilliant." Thrusting his broken wand through Bellatrix Lestrange's throat before she could cast the Killing Curse on Harry.

Together they watch the ants, dozens of them now, ferrying away miniscule portions of someone's spilled bit of teacake.

So many dead. Not just Hermione, though that's the one that is killing Harry, or Neville, poor brilliant sod. Remus, who died at his old friend Wormtail's silver hand. Peter himself, last of the Marauders, repaying his life debt to Harry by stepping in front of a blast of green light. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Snape, whom Harry had learned to trust too late. Hannah and Dennis and Orla and Blaise from the DA. Greg Goyle, who'd shocked everyone by fighting against his former companions. Even Draco, whom Ron had disemboweled in his moment of glory. And that sick bastard Tom.

Fred, hanging on to life by a thread at St. Mungo's. It's all too much. "Weren't we supposed to be happy?" Harry sighs. "I mean, we won, right?"

"Yeah, we won," Ron says, standing and stretching. "Reckon we'll celebrate some day. But it doesn't seem like the time for it, just now. We'll let other people be happy."

"But we'll be happy later. We will." He stands, feeling the scar on his hip screaming, and Ron looks at him glumly for a moment, then nods. "Come on, Ron," he says, "let's go in. We've got an early morning, tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to start things off with a change-up (and sorry to finish them up here with an American sports metaphor :wince:)! I didn't want to leave everyone anxious, waiting to see who dies, so I had the funeral straight off the bat.... All weddings from here on (though, I promise, not all fluff)!
> 
> It seemed to me when I wrote this in 2004 that there are a couple of reasons that, of the three members of the Trio, Hermione was the most likely to die. I hoped that that wouldn't be the case (and was glad when it wasn't!), but that was the thinking that got this fic started.... In any case, my apologies; I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the subject.


	2. Where

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill is overcome with terror in the garden. Someone unexpected comes to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this is nowhere near the wet-hankie piece that "Why" was. I promise.
> 
> Thanks to hhbarmaid for the wonderful beta work!

_21 August, 1998_

  
Death. Bill feels it creeping, can feel the edge crumbling away beneath him.

He has faced death a dozen times or more, in dusty tombs and curse-fogged firefights. Even, once, in his own dormitory, when Karen Fawcett stumbled in looking for her boyfriend and found him moaning on his hands and knees in Bill's bed. He knows death intimately. Recognizes the symptoms of its approach. The tightening of the gut. The cold sweat. The frightening clarity. The need to pee.

This is different. This is something he feels utterly unequipped to cope with.

Tomorrow, in a field in the south of France, Bill will go to face his doom. In dress robes.

And it will come at him wearing a white dress and a veil.

He shivers, for all that it is August, and the evening is stifling.

How can he be afraid of Fleur? Sweet, beautiful Fleur? Seductive, gorgeous, _charmante_ , silver-eyed...

Well, she is descended from a thing of legend, there is that. And when she is properly hacked off, she can be every bit as scary as his mother. Scarier.

Bill shakes his head. He knows he's suffering from pre-wedding jitters, a rite of passage as old as men and marriage. But it doesn't stop the incipient panic.

There's got to be some place he can go to unload this feeling. Someone he can talk to. Where?

Again he shakes his head.

Dad is out of the question. The "son, marriage is a sacred thing" conversation that they had before the rehearsal dinner was bad enough. Mum? He shudders. Charlie is dealing with a weeping Tonks, George is doing his nightly vigil at Fred's bedside in St. Mungo's.

There's Ginny and Harry.... But it doesn't seem right to go and unburden yourself to a sister and her fiancé who are a full decade younger than you are.

Ron. Talking to Ron about wedding anxiety would be just cruel.

Maybe getting married now is cruel. To everyone. So many ghosts. It had seemed like a good idea at the beginning of the summer--follow through on their plans to get married, to give everyone a cause to celebrate. But now it all seems too soon. Far too soon.

Maybe a change of scenery... Sunrise over the Valley of the Kings, that might settle his mind. Or a quick nip across the pond to New York--that East Village club. It's still early there--he could dance himself into oblivion...

But he doesn't want to go alone. And there is only one person he wants to go with. And she scares the pants off of Bill just at the moment.

A crisp crunch of footsteps on the gravel brings him back to himself.

The footsteps stop. "Good evening, William."

Oh, bloody hell. "Percy."

"Enjoying your last night of freedom?"

"And I thought you were such an advocate of the married state."

Bill's younger brother smiles primly. "I am. But I remember how I felt before Penny and I got married."

"You?" Bill says, less surprised that Percy was nervous than that he is admitting it.

"Yes, well," Percy says, staring down at Bill with his chest puffed out, "at least I managed to get through the rehearsal dinner before running off to be sick."

Bill winces. "Hell. Was it that obvious?"

"Monsieur Delacour was rather amused. Your young sister-in-law-to-be looked more cheerful than she had all evening. Even George smiled for a moment, and I can't say we've seen that in a while."

"Damn." All it had taken was a moment of looking at Fleur, her eyes and hair bright with glamours, thinking that, by the same time the next night, this would be his wife... His _wife_...

"If it's any consolation," Percy says, "I spent the hour before the ceremony with my head in the toilet. Penny's poor brother Derek had _no_ idea what to do with me."

Bill laughs, then looks up at his own younger brother. "I'm sorry we weren't there, Perce."

Behind his glasses, Percy's eyes darken. "So am I, William. So am I." He breathes grandiloquently. "Nobody's fault but my own."

They remain in silence for a moment, Bill sitting, Percy standing.

"Do you know," Percy continues, his tone exceedingly even, "do you know what I was thinking about when I was kneeling there, vomiting, my fifteen-year-old future brother-in-law the only one to comfort me?"

Bill finds himself peering up at Percy, perplexed. Where is this heading? This doesn't sound like Percy at all. He shakes his head.

"Do you remember," Bill's brother says, staring up into the night sky, "the Halloween Feast my second year?"

Charlie spiked the pumpkin juice to try to get into the pants of Felicia Caruthers; poor, skinny Percy had never had so much as a sip of alcohol to that point, and Bill--acting more as big brother than as Head Boy--spent the night in the toilets as the younger Weasley wretched and wept until he finally fell asleep. To Bill's knowledge, Percy has never gotten drunk again. "Yeah," Bill says. "I remember. Charlie still feels terrible about that." Especially since Felicia took the opportunity to disappear with Kenny Jordan.

"I'd always looked up to you, William, you see." Percy removes his glasses and begins to clean them on the sleeve of his robes. "Even if you did do things I couldn't even _imagine_ , you still did all of the things I most wanted to do myself. You were a top student, a prefect, Head Boy. You earned everyone's respect, from the youngest student to Professor Dumbledore himself. I admired that. I envied you that. But that night, what you did, staying with me while I was nauseated and keeping me dry and warm, telling me I'd feel better... I've always wanted to do the right thing, William. Too often I've failed. Occasionally, I've failed quite dismally. But I want you to know that--in spite of anything I've done--I've always carried my memory of that night as a reminder to do not only what's right, but what's good." Percy takes a deep breath. "I wished, that afternoon that Penny and I got married, that it could have been you in the bathroom with me, instead of her insufferably Muggle brother."

"Erm. Thanks, Perce." Bill gazes at his brother, stupefied.

A flight of bats passes overhead. Bill still can't shake the feeling that his brother isn't done. Percy's lips are thin and tight.

"Something on your mind, Perce?" Bill has seen this look before, and it usually bodes ill--Percy's about to spill the beans about some sort of wrong-doing. But what? Are Ron and Harry planning on pranking the honeymoon suite? "Have a seat?"

Percy nods precisely and places himself rigidly beside his eldest brother. "William," he says, "there is something that I feel bound to tell you about... about your fiancée. And myself."

This has got to be a joke, Bill decides. George must have set Percy up to this, or Ginny. Charlie, perhaps, though his style would have run more to Vaseline Charms on the sheets. It definitely has more flair than Ron is capable of at the moment. "You. And Fleur."

Percy snaps off a brisk nod.

Deciding to play along, Bill folds his arms and puts on his most indignant tone. "Going to tell me how you carried on this torrid affair, young Percy?"

The younger Weasley flinches in a way that Bill has a hard time believing that Percy is putting on. "It was _never_ a torrid affair. It was just twice. Once before you met her."

Stunned, Bill gazes at Percy. "And the other time?"

"The night she asked you to marry her."

"Bloody hell." Bill's world constricts; he can only see his brother's pinstriped knees. "Percy... Why are you telling me this?"

"You have to know that there was a reason, the second time."

"A reason?" Bill's stomach is threatening to rebel again. "What possible?... Just tell me. Please. Was this... before or after? She asked me?"

Very quietly, Percy answers, "After."

Damn. "Where?"

"My room."

"You mean... we spend the night making love, she asks me to marry her, I say yes, and then she jumps into bed with _you_?"

"Well," says Percy, somewhat alarmed, "she was never _in_ my bed. And I want to make it clear that I never reciprocated."

"You never?... How the bloody hell is that possible, Percy, come on?" Bill's circumscribed vision is pulsing red. He can see them on the floor of Percy's room, her legs over his shoulders, his face slack. "Right. Veela. I'm marrying a fucking Veela. Bloody hell." He is aware that the crisp lapel of his brother's robes is creasing in his fist.

Percy's face is white with shock and shame. "I... I'm sorry Bill. I should have told you sooner. I didn't think it would upset you so much..."

Now Bill laughs. "Not upset me? Why the fuck not?"

"I'm so sorry, Bill. I should never have let her kiss me."

"Kiss you? No. Too true. Because what man can resist after that?"

"You," Percy says, and Bill blinks. "That's what she told me. It's one of the reasons she fell in love with you, because her... charms didn't seem to affect you. " The younger Weasley straightens again. "Or myself, for that matter. Which is why she decided to kiss me the second time."

Again, Bill finds himself blinking. "What are you on about, Perce?"

"She kissed me that night because I had withstood her... charms when I was the substitute judge at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. "

Now the blinking stops, is replaced by staring. "She... _kissed_ you."

"Yes." Percy is looking away, his ears darkening in the moonlight. "She wanted to assure herself that your response to her that night when she asked you to marry her wasn't simply a matter of you succumbing to Veela glamours. So she came to me, sat on my bed-- _on_ my bed--weeping, told me you were engaged, and then she kissed me, and asked me to tell her what to do."

The blinking resumes. "And?"

Percy blinks back. "I told her to go and find you and tell you that you were the second luckiest man in Europe. Which she very happily went to do, only you were downstairs gallivanting about with Charlie, Ginny and their significant others."

"And Hermione. I remember."

"Yes," sighs Percy, "and Hermione."

For a moment, they sit, listening to the crickets. Each thinking of Ron, alone in his room on the top floor.

"So," Bill says after the moment has deepened just a bit too far, "she kissed you... to test _me_?"

Percy adjusts his glasses. "It made sense at the time."

Nodding, Bill peers closely at his middle brother. "And that's all that happened? A kiss?"

Percy sits up even more rigidly than before. "William, I will remind you that I was already a married man at the time."

Bill laughs and shakes his head. "Percy, Merlin... Do you realize?... Most men would have turned to stinksap. Turning down a Veela--even a _part-_ Veela--after she's kissed you? They'd have forgotten their _own_ names, let alone their wives'!" He laughs again, freely this time for the first time all night. "And you did it _twice_? I mean, how old were you when you refereed the Tri-Wizard Tournament? Fleur was still in school, and you're only a year older than she is!"

"I was a _judge_ ," Percy answers with some of his usual hauteur. "She was attempting to exert undue influence."

Now Bill is laughing uncontrollably. It starts as relief, but once Percy begins to glare balefully at him, the laughter is wild, manic hysteria. "Percy! HAaaa! Hoooooooo!"

"Really, William," Percy tisks, "I wish you could learn some moderation and decorum."

"HHHHHHHAAAAA!" Bill wails, weeping, onto his brother's shoulder, drunk with joy and amusement. "Percy! HOOOOOOOO!"

Percy cracks a smile. Then he begins to giggle along. "You should have seen her face when I told her to stop, the first time. It was before the second task and she was in this very skimpy bathing costume... Dragged me behind the stands and, uh, you know. When I told her to desist she looked at me as if I were speaking Gobbledygook."

Bill is howling--discomposed Fleur is quite a sight, and he knows it. Percy begins to laugh too, at first stiffly, then with abandon, and this makes Bill laugh all the harder. He hasn't seen Percy laugh like this since Ginny put Caulderon's Fire Gel in the twins' pants the summer before her first year at school.

After some time, the hysteria begins to dissipate.

"Hee!" coughs Bill. "Merlin, I needed that." He smirks. "'No' wasn't a word I think my beloved has heard very often. Well done, Perce. Hee!"

"Thank you," Percy says, attempting to reassemble his façade.

This sets Bill laughing again, but only for a bit.

"William?" Percy asks, and there is a young, foreign, timid look on his face. "May I ask you something?"

This sobers Bill somewhat. "Of course, Perce, anything."

"Hem. I know that Fleur knows about Jonathan and the other... boys. I suppose I just wondered... Is it going to be... difficult? Having to, you know, erm, specialize?"

Peering at his least empathetic relative--which, in a family with Fred and George, is saying something--Bill is at a loss what to say. Where has his straight-laced brother gone to, and who is this changeling? Bill can't imagine it ever occurring to Percy to ask such a question. "Do you really want the answer?"

Percy frowns, looking instantly older--himself once again. "Well, I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

Bill grins. "You know, Perce, you're the only one of my siblings who's ever shown any interest at all in my boyfriends. Except Ginny, and she was looking for practical advice." Percy frowns even more deeply, and Bill has to stifle a giggle. "Sure you're not interested in boys yourself?"

This provokes a splutter from Percy, and then an indignant blush, since Bill knows he is too proper and political a creature to say anything negative about Bill's sexuality. "No. I was simply trying to lend a sympathetic ear to my eldest brother. However..."

Bill embraces his brother. "I'm sorry, Percy, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm just winding you up, and you're really helping me out tonight." From the prim pursing of Percy's lips, he can tell that his brother is mollified. Somewhat. "The honest answer? I don't think so. I loved Jon and the others, Merlin knows, but it wasn't the equipment so much as the person that I was attracted to. Never screwed around on a boy with a girl or a girl with a boy. Or a boy with a boy or... You know. Monogamy is kind of the family thing, right?"

Percy nods, trying to look worldly.

Bill can't stand it. "Did have a few occasions with one of each, mind. That was fun. And then there was this time that these two Egyptian birds..." And that sends Percy wincing again, in spite of himself, and Bill is laughing once more.

"So," Bill asks, once he has finished this latest bout of laughter, "do I need to worry about throwing up again tomorrow?"

Percy squints at him through his glasses for a moment and then smiles decorously. "I doubt it, William. I assume you've gotten it out of your system. I did hyperventilate a bit at the altar, but otherwise, I'm sure you will be as fine as I was. Once Derek had pulled me out of the WC." He looks up at the moon. "I would suggest a good night's sleep, however."

"Thanks, Percy."

"You're welcome."

As they stumble into their beds, they hear a muffled pop, as George Apparates home from St. Mungo's for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The statement about it being the person and not the equipment is a somewhat sanitized paraphrase from a statement made by a former girlfriend of mine. To give credit where credit is due. :-)


	3. What

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie and Tonks battle it out in the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to hhbarmaid for the wonderful beta work!

_13 February, 1999_

The idea is to storm out of the house as quickly as possible and Apparate away before anyone can stop her. Of course, she remembers as soon as she slams the front door behind her that the anti-Apparition wards are still up from the war, so she decides to start walking towards the edge of the Weasleys' property.

Unfortunately, she isn't figuring on six inches of slushy snow, on the thinness of her dress robes, or on her own clumsiness. She stumbles three times before she's even cleared the kitchen garden.

Furious, disgusted, and on the edge of tears, Tonks throws herself down into the snow-covered bench. Just till I catch my breath, she thinks. Then I'll walk away from here and never come back.

Before the cold damp can quite soak through the silk of the robes--orange, only Charlie would think to give her robes of Cannon bloody orange, never mind the fact that she loved the dead brilliant way that they clashed with his hair, that she wore her own curls a garish Weasley red for the occasion just to take advantage of the affect--she casts a Drying Charm and a Warming Charm on her bum, then attempts to stand.

Her thin-soled, high-heeled shoes, however, have other ideas, and dump her back on her bottom, threatening her with wet and chill once again. A stream of Muggle-inspired invective spews from her mouth, and Tonks remembers for the first time that her grandfather is stranded back in the Burrow, a Tonks among the Weasleys. "Bloody fucking hell!"

The angry tears overflow now in spite of her best efforts to squeeze them off, and the old wounds ache as she begins to sob splashes of steam into the pearlescent night sky.

"And a bloody fucking good evening to you, too, Tonks," mutters an annoyed, familiar voice, and she realizes with a start that Charlie is standing there, holding a winter cloak in his hands. "What the bloody hell was _that_ all about?"

Tonks breathes in the sour, sharp air, trying to calm herself--but why? He's presented himself as a target, he didn't have the good grace to let her make her get-away: let him have it. "If you're too bloody thick to know what THAT was about, Charlie Weasley, than you're an even sadder specimen of the male of the bloody species than I thought. What? Perfect bloody Mum Weasley says something horrid and hateful but it's _my_ bloody fault because I let it hurt? Screw you, Charlie. That's.... Just... _Screw you_!" She yanks the cloak out of the stunned redhead's hands and swipes it across her snotty, weepy face. Eyes, nose and mind now clear, she stares at his stunned, sleet-pinched expression as levelly as she can. "You had a choice to make, Charlie, and I'm glad you made it. You had the chance to honor me and my feelings or to side with Mum, and I can't blame you, Mum won out. Well, great. At least this happened _tonight_ , because if it'd happened after tomorrow and you'd let her say something like that to me, I wouldn't have been able to walk away, I'd have had to fucking _kill you_!" Well, bollocks. Now she's crying again. Bugger.

She is vaguely aware that Charlie's weight is settling into the slush beside her, that he is draping the snot-smeared cloak over her shoulders.

She takes a swing at him, but he blocks it, the tough leather of his palm absorbing a punch that Moody would probably have made fun of. She pulls back her hand.

"Tonks," he says. Maybe he's been saying it for a while, but she hasn't been listening. He's sitting beside her, carefully not touching. "Tonks, I made my choice two years ago. I told you. You're my mate. In every sense. If you walk away from this house now, I'm coming with you, and I'll never turn back." He looks pale, much smaller than usual, his Dragon Keeper's strength banked like a campfire on a wet night. "But... Tonks, don't make me do this just because my mum doesn't know what she's talking about. She didn't mean to hurt you. She doesn't know."

"Doesn't?..." Tonks splutters, tears flaring back to anger in an instant. "Of _course_ she bloody knows.... 'Babies are what it's all about,' leering at your bloody beached-whale sisters-in-law like they were bloody queens, rubbing my bloody _face_..." Tears win out again. Double bugger.

For the first time, Charlie touches her, lightly, on the forearm, and Tonks nearly jumps out of her skin. "She doesn't know, Tonks."

"She... _What_?"

"I've never told her. I've never told anyone."

It takes a moment for his words to sink in. "You... You never _told_?..." His broad, honest face stares at her, open, concerned. No subterfuge. "What are you on about, Weasley? Of course she knew. They _all_ bloody knew I was pregnant. Where's that supposed to have _gone_ , the bloody cabbage patch?"

"They knew you'd lost the... the pregnancy when Grimmauld Place was attacked, that second time. But I wasn't going to tell them the extent of your injuries. Wasn't my place, Tonks. Wasn't anyone's business but yours and your Healer's. Mine too, I suppose. But certainly not my family's."

Mrs. Weasley's wonderful prime rib is threatening to come up. "So... She..."

"She was toasting all of us, love. She was toasting you, the poor, clueless old bint."

"Oh, Charlie," she moans, wishing she could disappear into her cloak. Every clumsy move she's ever made in front of Mrs. Weasley added together isn't a sneeze, compared to this. "Oh, fuck. What have I done?"

"Nothing, love," he sighs, and throws his thick arms around her. "It's me that's done it. I should have told you. I should have asked if it was okay to tell them." His voice is getting heavy. "I just, you know, didn't want to before the wedding, I didn't want anyone to think..."

"What?" she cries, wincing. "That I was damaged goods?"

"That you were anything but the woman I was in love with." His forehead rests against hers. "I'm sorry, love. I'm so bloody sorry."

"Should be, you bloody git," she says, or tries to say, because his mouth is on hers, and suddenly things seem much better.

Snogging has always been a way of answering all questions for the two of them. Tonks wonders if this will always be true. Hopes it will.

When they have reached a breathing point, Tonks sighs steam into Charlie's shoulder.

"What?" he asks.

"I'm the last," she says. "Last of the Tonkses. Last of the Blacks. Sirius gone. Auntie Bell gone. Auntie Narcissa on the loony ward at St. Mungo's. Draco fertilizing daisies, which is about all he was good for, the little bugger. Two bloodlines funnel down to me, and I'm a dead end."

His lips are on her ear and so she feels his words as much as hears them: "No one gets to talk that way about my wife."

She feels something swell up inside of her.

"Oi, Tonks? Charlie?" A muffled voice calls out through the snow that seems to have started falling. "You two all right?"

Tonks looks up and sees four... no, five shapes approaching, backlit by the Burrow's lights. "Wotcher, George," she says, struggling to sound even vaguely cheerful. "Yeah, we're okay."

George nods, looking exhausted. Ron ghostlike. Luna wraithlike. Harry and Ginny clinging to each other, his steps still halting as he leans on her.

"Bloody brilliant," mutters Charlie, an uncharacteristic edge to his voice. "They send the non-pregnant ones to calm us down.

The boys all blink. Not Luna--she never blinks--nor Ginny, who answers sensibly, "Fleur and Penny would have taken a half hour to waddle out here, and their husbands weren't coming without them. Mum's in a right state, and Dad's trying to calm her. She doesn't know what she said, but she's figured out it was pretty stupid, whatever it was. And Tonks, your granddad’s a bit perplexed, the poor old dear."

"Bloody hell" is all that Tonk can manage.

"Tonks," Ron says, his eyes too old for someone who's just about to turn nineteen, "is this about the... the baby you lost?"

Charlie has made jokes over the years about Weasley men's lack of empathy--there it is again. God love Ron, he means well, but that was not the thing to say, and whatever it is she's feeling, Tonks can't say a word.

So Luna, of all people, speaks. "You can't have children, can you, Nymphadora?" And there it is: that absolutely wrong, absolutely right thing to say. Luna.

Charlie is holding her, and stroking her, and all of them are looking at Luna like owls. "Tonks thought everyone knew, you see," Charlie is spluttering. "Only I didn't think it was my job to share her private business, even with you lot."

And suddenly all of them are reaching out to her, and she finds herself wrapped in them. Then, just as quickly, Tonks finds herself standing, lighter than she has felt in months. "Come on," she says. "Let's get inside. It's bloody cold out here and I think I owe your mum an apology and a half."

Together, they all stumble through the snow back to the house. Charlie kisses her on the cheek, his lips burning against the chill. "Didn't think you'd get out of marrying me that easy, did you?"

Nervous as they step up onto the porch, she whispers back, "What? You thought that was _easy_?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has come to my attention that for someone who prides himself on being Broad Minded, my fics betray a very... conventional approach to love and marriage. I prefer to think of it as archetypal... :smirk: but you can convince me otherwise. What think you?


	4. Who

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ginny sneaks out to meet a lover on the night before her wedding... and finds someone she didn't expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta. I've added some, um, material since this piece was first posted.

_28 June, 2001_

The butterflies in her stomach make Ginny feel ridiculous. Here she is, an honest-to-goodness decorated war hero with almost nineteen years' experience sneaking around the Burrow, and she's as nervous tonight, stealing off for an assignation with her lover, as if she's never touched a man.

In the kitchen she almost turns back, before yelling at herself--in her mind, of course. She's getting married tomorrow. She won't be able to do this again. And she burns with need. Her breasts, her quim, her whole body aches for his firm, well-practiced touch.

After casting Silencing Charms on the hinges and on each of her feet, she opens the kitchen door and tiptoes out. Leaping nimbly over the middle step down from the porch--the one that creaks--she eases herself into the garden.

Stopping just a few paces from the house, she looks up. There's no sign of light or movement from her parents' window, nor anywhere else in the house. She needn't have worried about silence--crickets are playing amorous symphonies that could drown out an army of Weasley mischief-makers out on their midnight rounds.

Trying not to stumble, trying not to moan out loud at the feeling of her old cotton dressing gown moving over her flesh, she makes her way towards the garden bench.

Someone is there. Who? Is he early? Her breath quickens.

No. It is a woman. A girl. Her head is down, her shoulders heaving. Ginny curses--silently, of course--realizing who it must be, but with no idea at all why she might be out here at such a frustratingly inconvenient time. "Gabrielle?"

Ginny's young sister-in-law-by-extension looks up, and her enormous blue eyes glisten wide before narrowing.

"Is something wrong, Gabrielle?" Ginny sits beside her; even in her distracted, hungry state, she can't help but notice the young girl's misery. Her body--longer than Ginny's own--is twisted against the arm of the bench.

" _Tort? Tu as tort! Salope! Putain! Tu l'as volé de moi_!" Gabrielle spits, and then dissolves into tears.

Stunned at Gabrielle's tone, and having no clue what she's just said, Ginny blinks, then touches her on the shoulder. Again the part-Veela glares at her before dissolving into tears. "Gabi? Gabi, are you... angry with me?"

Gabrielle wails, throwing herself against Ginny's shoulder, pulling Ginny tight to her.

This isn't the embrace Ginny has been anticipating all night. She strokes Gabrielle's long, disheveled hair, the lovely chignon from dinner long abandoned. "What have I done, Gabi? I'm so sorry, whatever it is.... How can I help? Shhh. Shhh...."

The younger girl--what is she now, Ginny wonders, fourteen? Fifteen? Merlin, was I this young when I bullied my way along to the Department of Mysteries?--weeps, unbridled, and Ginny is forcibly reminded of her brother howling on Harry's lap the night before Hermione's funeral. What has happened? Has someone been hurt? Has there been a new attack after all these years? Could he?...

"Gabrielle," Ginny says in what she hopes is something like her mother's voice of reassuring authority. "I need to know what's wrong. Tell me, or I won't be able to help. What is it?" Gabi sniffles, sitting back, her eyes wide. Good, Ginny thinks, I learned something from Mum after all. "Tell me, Gabi. What's wrong?"

Blinking tears away, gasping for breath, Gabrielle Delacour suddenly looks even younger than her age, and nowhere near as gorgeous as Ginny knows her in fact to be. "It is stupid," she moans, finally. " _Je suis idiote_!"

"Nonsense," Ginny murmurs, stroking her blotchy, tear-streaked face, trying to wipe away the tears. The tears are coming faster than she can wipe. "Nothing that could get you this upset could possibly be stupid. Tell me what's wrong. Is anyone hurt?"

The girl shakes her head. Ginny lets out a breath that she wasn't aware of holding. That's a relief, she thinks.

"Did someone in my family do something or say something to you?"

Gabrielle pulls a face of pure, dejected misery, and suddenly Ginny sees it.

"Oh, bloody hell," she sighs. "You're angry with me, aren't you?" Gabi nods. "Because of Harry?" She nods again, and Ginny pulls her into a hug once more. "Oh, you poor, poor... I'm so sorry."

And Gabrielle is weeping again, and again Ginny is pulled back to another summer night, her own tears soaking through Charlie's shirt, just as Gabi's are soaking through her thin bathrobe. And Ginny rocks her, and kisses the top of her head, saying, "Shh... Shh... I'm so sorry, luv. I'm so sorry...."

"'E was supposed to _wait_ for me!" Gabrielle moans. "'E saved my life! 'E saved my life and I came to 'Ogwarts because of 'im and now he is marrying _you_ and I feel so... _stupide_!"

"Oh, Merlin, Gabrielle, I'm so sorry, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."

"Why?" Gabi laughs damply. "Why be sorry? 'E is yours! And 'e should be! I'm not so much an idiot really, even if I am acting like one... Even my first year I saw 'ow much 'e loved you, one would 'ave to be _aveugle_ , blind as the bat not to see it. And the DA meetings, and the battle... And at Fleur and _Guillaume_ 's wedding, I knew, Fleur told me you were _fiancés_.... But I thought... I thought 'Arry would wait." Her beautiful face twists once again into a mask of utter wretchedness. "I fell in love at the age of eight with the man 'o rescued me, only to discover I 'ave already lost 'im to the _other_ girl 'e rescued! It is _tout à fait absurd_... Totally... a _joke_."

Ginny does find herself laughing, but it is out of sympathy with the poor girl. "I'm so sorry, Gabi. It’s not a joke. Nothing this upsetting could possibly be a joke."

Gabrielle pouts dejectedly. Ginny has to bite her cheeks not to laugh again.

"If anyone in the world knows how you feel," she says, "I do." When that provokes an expression of skeptical surprise, Ginny feels that she has permission to continue. "So, everybody knows Harry rescued me from the Chamber of Secrets at the end of my first year," she begins. Never mind what I was doing down there in the first place, she thinks. I need to wait until you've been in the family a few more years before we go there. "Mind, I was already smitten with the Boy Who Lived, from stories about him when I was a little girl, years before I'd even met him. I've fallen in love five times in my life, and three of them were Harry..."

Ah, a small smile. If having Fleur in the family has taught Ginny anything, it is that nothing amuses the French more than a story laced with love and irony.

"So, I'd heard all of these stories about this boy who defeated Voldemort, and how he had been hidden away from the Wizarding World, but that he would come back to take his rightful place... It was straight out of fairytale. I thought, right. I'll be his princess, and when comes back, I'll be there and I'll marry him. And then, on the day that he made his return, showing up for the Hogwart's Express to start his education, I _was_ there! And, as it turns out, my brother becomes his best friend! I was so excited, because I knew-- _knew_ \--that he would fall in love with me and whisk me away to Potter Manor, wherever the hell I thought that was. I was _so_ excited, unfortunately, that I couldn't speak in his presence. I knocked things over whenever I was near him. I stuck my elbow in the butter. I dropped bowls of soup into my lap. More than once."

Gabi snorts. Love and irony.

"Well, to be fair, I was eleven. As I remember, you were able to speak to Harry just fine when you first came to school."

Even by starlight, Ginny can tell that Gabrielle is blushing. "I dropped food more than once myself."

"Ah, then you understand. But you see, I wasn't even at your level yet. It wasn't even until the end of that first year that he saved me from the Chamber of Secrets and I truly knew what it meant to fall in love. Because I realized for the first time that not only was he famous, and a nice boy with gorgeous green eyes, but he was the real deal. He was a hero. He risked his life for me, someone he barely knew. He killed a bloody Basilisk. And now I was well and truly lost. You know."

Gabi nods. Comrades. Sisters.

"The horrible thing was," Ginny says softly, "that seeing him for what he was didn’t stop me from realizing that he was a boy. And like most boys, he was an idiot."

Again, Gabrielle nods. "Tell me about it. _Imbéciles_...."

"Well, they can't help it. Believe me, I know, I've got six brothers, and they're sweet as hell, but they're gits, every last one. Harry, of course, hadn't the slightest clue what girls were about. Ignored me entirely. Developed a crush on a girl who, well, just made me want to hex her nine ways to Sunday, she was such a silly bint." Ginny pauses, not being particularly silly herself, and having some clue what the younger girl is considering saying.

"I..." Gabrielle began, then stopped, hiding her face in Ginny's shoulder. She mutters into the damp cotton of Ginny's robe. "I wanted to hex you. A lot. At school. At Fleur and Bill's wedding. At little Tristan's _baptème_..."

Ginny just nods.

They sit there in silence for a moment. Ginny takes a deep breath, trying not to think about her lover, about where he is, or what is holding him up. Is he hard, thinking of her? Is he playing with himself?

" _Ginèvre_?" Gabi says, and Ginny shivers and smiles to hear her silly name sounding so exotic. "You said... You said you fell in love five times?...."

"Yes," Ginny murmurs. "I gave up on Harry around the time your sister came to Hogwarts. There was this bloody ball, and not only didn't he ask me, but even when the girl he was obsessed with turned him down, he didn't even _think_ of me. Then, not long after that, he saved you from the lake, and I thought, See, it was nothing personal. He saved you from the Basilisk because that's what he does. So I decided I wasn't going to wait for him, and I started going out--and falling in love--with other boys. And I know you're not going to believe me, but it was wonderful. For once to be with a boy who really wanted to be with me. _Me_. Who wasn't trapped in his head thinking about slaying Dragons and evil sorcerers and rescuing fair maidens at the drop of a hat. Having _fun_. Realizing that having a relationship with someone isn't just about fairy tales and happily ever after--it's about spending time with them, and working through things with them and sometimes even fighting with them. So I owe Michael and Dean a lot."

Gabrielle digests this for a while, then asks, very quietly, "And the last time?"

"Ah," says Ginny. What to tell? "The last time... You have to understand, Gabrielle, I was very happy with my boyfriend, Dean. This was during my fifth year. And Dean was funny, and romantic, and he drew the loveliest pictures...." And had the _most_ amazing hands. "He was everything I thought Harry couldn't be. And somehow, in the middle of all of that Half-Blood Prince nonsense... Were you there that year?"

"No, I came the year after, but everyone talked about it."

"Well, Harry suddenly noticed me. When I say _noticed_... Harry went out with a couple of girls that year. Friends of mine, Luna and Daphne, you'll meet them tomorrow--Luna's seeing a bit of Ron, these days. But every time we'd run into each other at Hogsmeade, or in DA meetings, or even the Great Hall, I'd feel as if this enormous green spotlight was beaming down on me; I'd look up and he'd be staring, not at the very nice girl on his arm, but at _me_. Dean ended up getting properly hacked off, not that I can blame him, and I can't say I was exactly chuffed. I mean, not only had he ignored me for years, but here he was, treating my friends, my _boy_ friend as if they weren't there. After the whole mess at Easter, the Death Eater attack on the train, we're all laid up in the Hospital Wing, almost a dozen of us, including Dean, myself, Daphne, Luna, Neville, and Hermione." Oh, Hermione. Neville. Even now, three years later, it's hard to say their names without wincing. Should we?... With Fred like Sleeping Beauty at St. Mungo's? Yes. Time to celebrate life.

Ginny takes a deep breath and continues quickly. "And he and Ron come bursting in as soon as Madam Pomfrey allows visitors, and Ron runs off to Hermione, which is only to be expected, and where does Harry go? To his supposed girlfriend, Daphne? To his mates, Dean and Neville? No, all pale and sweaty he runs to _me_ , spewing on that he's so relieved that I'm okay, and that he couldn't have stood it if I had died... And I, um, let him have it."

Gabrielle frowns. "Let 'im 'ave... what?"

Her English is better than Fleur's, and it's easy to forget that it isn't her native language sometimes. Ginny grins and shakes her head. "I, erm, yelled at him. Told him there was a room full of people who'd almost gotten killed trying to keep him alive, all of them his friends, and what the hell was he doing talking to _me_." His face, chalk white. "And he stands there nodding. When I've yelled myself out, he says I'm right, that he owes everyone in that room his life, some more than once, but that there's nothing that he can do about it because I'm the one that he's in love with. Which came as a bit of a shock, for some reason, even though I suppose it shouldn't have. All of the people in the room are staring at the two of us. He goes on to say that he's been in love with me since the previous summer, but that he's very aware that I no longer have any bloody feelings for him, the silly boy, and so he hasn't wanted to burden me."

Gabrielle smirks.

"He says that everyone in that room knows how he feels, that he's had several screaming matches with Ron and Hermione, a bout of drunken weeping with Neville and Seamus that led to a near fistfight with Dean, that Luna had continually told him he was being silly not listening to his own heart and that Daphne had told him to get his thumb out of his noble Gryffindor arse and stop wasting her time. Which was when I decided that I really liked Daphne. Then he tells us all that there's this ridiculous prophecy that he's found out about--the one... yes, you know the one--and that he's been so obsessed with his _own_ mortality the whole year that he's taken for granted the threat to the rest of our lives, but that seeing me in peril _again_ made him realize that he couldn't stand to see me die, that he would rather die himself than see me hurt again, that he loves me, and that he has to tell me how he feels." She never saw him cry before that, not even after Sirius died. Not even when his arm was broken. Her mother and Ron talk about him crying after Cedric's death, but she didn't see it. Chin quivering. Snot running. It hurt to watch. "Then he apologizes to me, to Dean and to Daphne, in that order, and practically runs out of the infirmary."

Gabrielle's blue-silver eyes glisten as she gazes up at Ginny. Clearly _this_ is the sort of story she enjoys. "And that's when you fell in love with 'im the last time, yes?"

Ginny laughs. "No. No, I was furious with him, with all of them. I wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't even look him in the face for two weeks. And he was perfectly content to be shunned. Thought he deserved it. Do you want to know who finally talked sense into me?"

The younger girl gives a Gallic shrug. "Your brother? 'Ermione?"

"Well, they tried." Ron loudly, Hermione more reasonably, if more persistently. "No, it was Dean. He said that he had known all along that I loved Harry, that it was obvious from the way that I woke up every time Harry entered the room. That he loved snogging and spending time with me but that, in all honesty, it wasn't much fun being my second choice, and there was a Muggle girl back in Hammersmith that he fancied. In retrospect, I think he was trying to be helpful. At the time... Well, I broke his nose. Poor Dean."

"Is he... did he die?"

"What? Oh, no. He's back in London. Engaged, I think, but the girl won't let him keep in touch with his wizarding friends. Won't let him use magic. What a waste. He was an extraordinary magical artist." The tears on Gabrielle's cheeks are almost dry. She can come to the point, now. "That May, Harry and I actually started talking about some things. Truly getting to know each other. And _that's_ when I really fell in love with him." His seventeenth birthday. His kisses on her stomach. His chest against her chest. The newfound ocean of his unspectacled eyes. The second time she saw him cry. "The thing is, Gabrielle, no one understands better than I do how you must feel about Harry. And how angry you must be with me, and with him." Silver eyes flicker. "But I also know that if he'd returned my feelings from the beginning, we would probably not be getting married tomorrow. Well," she says, looking up, "Today. That there would have been no way to reach the point where we know each other, where we _trust_ each other. Does that make sense?"

Gabrielle shrugs again, less French this time, more resigned. "It does not change 'ow I feel."

She finds her hand stroking the other girl's cheek. "Gabrielle, Harry's wonderful. But so are you. Believe me, you'll find someone. I know that's not much consolation. I wish I could offer more. But things change. Look at me...."

"Yes," sighs Gabi, "look at you. You loved 'Arry all along. The love, it changed over the years, and you even tried to explore loving others, but did you ever truly stop loving 'Arry?"

Now it is Ginny's turn to shrug. "I don't know." She peers into Gabi's eyes. "But does any of us truly know how she feels? After that Easter, I would have told you I hated him. The truth is that love at first sight takes time." That earns a sad chuckle from Gabrielle. "You'll find someone, Gabi. I promise you will. That doesn't change anything right now, but you have to believe me. You're an incredible, beautiful girl. You'll find a boy..."

Heaving a deep, long sigh, Gabrielle stares up into Ginny's eyes, and Ginny is startled by their iridescence. She remembers, for a moment, that this is a part-Veela. "I don't like boys," she says. "I like 'Arry. 'E is very lucky to 'ave you, _Ginèvre_." Leaning forward, she kisses Ginny, first on one cheek, then on the other, sending a quiver through the older woman that can only be described as sexual. Unwinding slowly, she stands and strides toward the house. " _Bonne nuit, et félicitations_ ," she whispers over her shoulder, and disappears.

Ginny has just let out a long breath when teeth close on her neck and she has to bite her lip to keep herself from shrieking. "Who?..."

A familiar voice, husky with desire, whispers, "You know it drives me crazy to see someone else kissing you."

Passion and desire blossom in Ginny, and the only response she can muster is a muffled groan. She begins to turn, to pull him over the back of the bench and have her way with him, but strong arms reach under hers and hold her in place; strong, wand-callused hands close over her eyes.

"Eager, aren't you?"

"Merlin, I want you so much. She's so sweet, but I _so_ wanted her to leave. I was afraid..." His tongue runs along her earlobe, robbing her of speech, sprouting gooseflesh from her neck to her shins.

"Afraid she'd scare me off?" he whispers wetly into her ear. "Not on your life. The sight of you here in this thin robe..." He moans, and the sound sends a thrill straight to Ginny's center. "I could see your nipples stiffen when she kissed you."

"Maybe," she stammers, "maybe we should g-go a little further from the house. If anyone heard us... If my mother saw you, she'd kill us. It's after m-midnight...."

"No, my love," he says, his hands moving down from her eyes and opening her robe, the summer night air cool on her breasts, on her moist, open quim. "I'm going to make love to you right here, and the only thing that will keep the sound of you screaming my name from waking the entire neighborhood will be the crickets."

She laughs, the sound rolling up from depths she likes to pretend she doesn't know she has. "One last night," she says. "One last night of being nasty and illicit, before it's all family and government sanctioned... Do you know how _bizarre_ it is that my own father is going to be signing the piece of paper that makes it legitimate for us to do this as much as we want? I don't _want_ permission, I don't want _conjugal intercourse_ , I want to _fuck_."

His long fingers dance lightly over her flesh, nipples to ribs to belly to that little nexus that has been vibrating with need-- _Ahh!_ \--leaving each spot hungrier after the caress than before. "Well," he murmurs, "we don't _have_ to get married...."

She laughs again, only now marveling that he managed to sneak up on her even with that bloody walking stick he has to use. "You're not getting out of it that easy, Harry Potter. Even if I still feel as if getting married on Victory Day is a little odd." Poor George. Poor Susan. Poor Ron.

He kisses her, his hands continuing to search. "Ron will be fine, love." He kisses her neck. "You know, standing there listening to you... She does know I didn't really save her life, doesn't she?"

"I guess. But... _Oh_... She knows _you_ didn't know that." How can he do that with just a touch?

"You're right."

"Get used to it."

"I will," he says, and she can hear the grin in his voice. "So... I'm 'the real deal,' am I?"

"You heard that?" Images of Harry's face--bloodied, besmirched, beautiful--flash through her mind. Love at first sight takes time. "Well, yes you are. But Harry, if you don't come over here right now and fuck me, I'm going to be screaming your name, all right, only it won't be out of desire, and even the crickets won't mask the racket."

And like the smart man that he has become, he does just as she asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From my rusty, dusty store of schoolboy French:
> 
> "Tort? Tu as tort! Salope! Putain! Tu l'as volé de moi!"=Wrong? You're wrong! Bitch! Slut! You stole him from me!
> 
> " Je suis idiote!"=I'm an idiot!
> 
> "tout à fait absurd"=totally absurd
> 
> "aveugle"=blind.
> 
> " fiancés"=engaged to be married
> 
> ""baptème"=christening; baptism.
> 
> "Bonne nuit, et félicitations"=Good night, and congratulations.
> 
> Yes, this came out just after the title for _Half-Blood Prince_ was announced (and it was copyedited to add the hyphen). I really did go there.
> 
> And yes, we do finally get to see a wedding next time! Wonder who it'll be?!


	5. When

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George plays the MC at the wedding to end all weddings... but only if he can keep the groom upright and the bride alive, his employees happy, his sister sane, and his dad on-script, and not think too much about who isn't there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta; Daphne wouldn't be the same without her.

_11 August, 2003_

"When is Dad getting here?" Ron mewls. "Is he here yet?" His head, which seems to have been attacked by a bottle or two of vintage Madam Sleekeasy's, rests in his best man's lap, there in the garden bench.

"Nah, he's still at the Ministry," George says, his eyes locked on Harry's. George has been through this three times before, playing the Master of Ceremonies, and recognizes pre-marital panic for what it is. "He'll be here, Ron. He hasn't missed a wedding yet. And every secretary and department head fears Mum's wrath too much to try to keep him when he's needed here."

Ron chews on his lips. "I... I don't think I can do this." Harry winces.

Yup. Done this. George winks at Harry and says, "What, little bro? It's easy as Gobstones. Just stand at the altar with the rest of us without fainting, and when Dad says to kiss the bride, make sure you go for the one in white."

Stony-faced, Ron mutters, "I can't marry Luna. People who love me die."

Before he can stop himself--really, he knows better--George says, "Ron, luv, that's _Harry's_ line."

Both men stare at him, eyes round. Harry pats Ron's shoulder and apparently decides to ignore George's _bon mot_. "She'd rather marry you anyway, Ron. I don't think fear of dying is ever going to deter Luna."

His face flooding with color for no apparent reason, Ron looks up at George, pleading. "Is she okay? Is Luna all right?"

The truth here is not the way to go. "Yeah, of course, Ron. A bride on her wedding day? She's happier than a Niffler in a Gringotts vault. Can't wait to see you."

There's an infantile whimper from Ron. "Tell her... Tell her I love her, will you, George?"

Harry, who has managed to look serious through this whole charade, can't help rolling his eyes; Ron's still staring at Harry's knees.

"I think we're fine here," Harry says blandly. "Could you go check in with the opposing camp? And," he continues, his voice flat but his eyes smirky, "tell my wife I love her."

"I'll do that," George says, saluting, and then thinks as he walks away, As long as you don't go about loving her out here in the garden again. Two years later and my eyes have still not fully recovered.

Mum is madly rearranging the seats as the flame-headed midget Beaters, Tristan and Bilius, run laughing from Condie-the-tiny and molasses-skinned Cassiopeia, all four cousins howling with glee, their blue dress robes flying behind them. Mum grumbles at them, but she's beaming, absolutely in her element. Poor Mum. Won't have another of these shindigs for quite a while.

Fleur is living up to her name at the kitchen table, sorting the bridesmaids' bouquets and the groomsmen's boutonnières. She barks past George as he enters. " _Tristan! Conduiramours! Lentement, oui_?"

" _Oui, maman_ ," two toylike voices chirp. Cassie starts singing, "Wee, wee, weeweewee!"

"Oi, Fleur, what'd you and Bill think, sticking a name that long on a squirt that short?"

She looks up at him, smiling; she's learned what Weasley teasing looks like. "If she is big enough to conjugate, she is old enough for her full name. Conduiramours was the name of a queen, the wife of Sir _Perceval_." Her face is fuller now, less pretty. More beautiful.

George shakes his head to clear it. "Just don't tell Penny."

Fleur grins again, "Hmm. Penelope is patient, but per'aps not so. Besides," she grimaces, "Bilius? Why would she and _Perceval_ ever give their firstborn such a name?"

George grimaces. "Family name. It's what Dad wanted to call your husband, till Mum put her foot down."

"Another reason for me to kiss your mother," Fleur says.

Pointing down to the flowers, George asks, "Those close to sorted? The guests are starting to arrive."

" _Oui_ , I saw that 'orrible Prewett girl out in the garden with Gabrielle. Up to no good, _sans doute_."

"Cousin Mafalda?" George smirks. "She not such a bad sort." Fleur fixes him with a glacially Gallic stare. "Well, I mean... for a Slytherin."

"Hmph" is the extent of Fleur's answer. With a practiced flourish, she presents George with a basket now packed with bouquets; she has reserved one for herself, along with a basket of flower petals for the children. "Bring these up to the ladies, _soigneusement, s'il te plait_."

"Yes, ma'am," George says, not quite sure what he's agreed to but snapping off a Peeves-ish salute nonetheless. Maybe this'll settle the girls down, he thinks, not too hopefully. Shuffling along the hallway to the stairs, he sees Charlie and Bill sorting the drinks for after. "No sampling the wares, you two!" George barks in his Head Boss voice. Both of his elder brothers have the good grace to look embarrassed when they grin back at him.

Smiling. Everyone's smiling. Well, except for Ron and Luna, and they get sanity passes for today. Not that Luna needs one anyway.

So what's my excuse? wonders George. He climbs the stairs, leans against the wall. Of course, right below poor Colin's snapshot of first DA meeting, there's a photo of the two of them, G and F on their hideous Weasley jumpers, grinning like madmen, and for the life of him George can't remember if he's the one in the F or the G. When was that?

George hears the door to the loo close crisply up on the landing. "Ah, George, it's excellent that I saw you."

Trying to keep the wince purely internal, George greets his brother. "Hey, Perce. Beautiful day for a wedding, yeah?"

"What?" Percy asks, straightening his glasses. "Oh, yes. Lovely. Listen, I've just been speaking with Miss Greengrass, and she's concerned that our inventory isn't going to keep up with the demand as the school shopping rush hits over the next few weeks--"

"Percy--"

"So I want you to reconsider outsourcing some of our manufacturing. Those Moldovan chappies made an excellent proposal; they would be able to get production going as soon as the ink was dry--"

"Percy--" Bringing him in to manage the business end really had seemed like such a good idea.

"And with the sales volume that we're talking about, I'm sure that any drop-off in quality would be offset--"

Fratricide seems like an even better idea just now. "Percy, _NO_. We're keeping production in-house. That was the plan from the beginning. When our shelves are bare and kids have to walk away with order forms in their hands, it's all good. Now go down and enjoy the wedding. No more business today."

Percy arranges his dress robes, puffing his chest out in his best Percy fashion. "All right. But I want to meet with you, Miss Spinnet and Miss Greengrass on Monday morning to make sure that this inventory squeeze doesn't undermine our market position."

"Percy, take a deep breath. You can't go broke making money." George can't help but be pleased when Percy turns, unable to think of a way of answering that. "Oh, and Perce?"

"Yes?"

"Did you know that Conduiramours was Sir Percival's queen in the old stories?" Percy's eyes narrow, and something unfamiliar, something vaguely akin to glee bubbles up inside George. "Wonder why Fleur would have named her daughter that. Any ideas?"

Percy stomps down the stairs stiffly as ever.

"Guess I'll ask Bill!" George calls, and turns back up the stairs. Even the sight of his old room--door closed--doesn't entirely take away the pleasure of this small bit of mischief.

Daphne Greengrass is sitting at the foot of the stairs up to the third floor. She has a lit cigarette in one hand, trailing smoke lazily in the heavy, indoor summer air. In the other hand, her wand is slowly tipping her straight sable locks silver.

"You know, Daph, most people want to charm the grey _out_ of their hair, not in."

"Why follow fashion when you can set it?" She leans back, her very ample figure looking positively obscene even beneath the silk and organdy of her lavender bridesmaid's robes. Taking a drag from her cig, she peers at him. "So, no go on the outsourcing, eh?"

"Daph, come on." Should have known it was her idea. The woman was no great shakes when it came to Charms or Defense, but bloody brilliant when it came to Cold Cash. "That's not how we do things."

She bats her eyes, which is moderately terrifying. "Oh, no. We wouldn't want to change Saint Fred's business plan, now would we?" George's gorge rises, and Daphne holds her hand over her mouth in mock shock. "Oops! Are we not supposed to say that?" She takes another drag from her cigarette.

Looking at her, George shakes his head and laughs sadly. "You're right. Maybe I'm being stupid, sticking to ideas Fred and I had when we were seventeen. But..." He gazes at the door, _Fred and George's Room, Keep Out, Top Secret_ chipped and fading. Again he shakes his head. "Look, we'll talk it through with Big Head Boy and Alicia first thing Monday. Okay?"

"Okay, Boss Man." Ash spills from her fag; she charms it away with a flick of her wand. Her keen bookkeeper's eyes appraise him. "You spend far too much time working. Far too much time making other people laugh. When are we going to get you laid, Georgie-porgie?"

Again, George feels his stomach rise, though this time it is in shock rather than anger. "You volunteering for the job, Daph?" For a moment, the idea of burying himself in her ample bosom, her ample _everything_ , is quite alluring. "I thought you were telling us that Swot Goldstein had the tongue that launched a thousand ships?"

"Oh, Anthony keeps me very, _very_ happy, thank you very much." She grins evilly, her full Slytherin wickedness out on the surface. "But I must say I've always wanted to find out if what they say about the width of a man's hand and the thickness of his..." George knows better than to look down at what he knows is his very broad palm, but it's not easy to restrain himself. She's good. At being bad. "Well, Boss Man, let's say that Anthony could probably have his self-interest tickled in another direction if I so chose. But no, I can't say that my ambitions were running so high..." She Vanishes the stub of her cigarette and gazes at the door of George and Fred's old room. "Still, I'm sure _someone_ worthy of your royal Weasleyishness might volunteer. Because let's face it, luv, you need your pipes cleaned."

George splutters, nearly dropping the flowers. "Bloody hell, Daphne! You're really awful!"

"'S why you love me. Boss."

He laughs, and it feels good. George remembers running into the two of them up at the Broomsticks the winter before Potter and Ginny finally got their heads out of their arses: Harry sitting intense and silent next to Daphne, her making one obscene remark after another until she finally got him to crack a smile. "Damn. How the hell did you ever end up with Harry?"

Suddenly her face goes very slack, as if she can't trust it to smirk, as if she doesn't know how to arrange it. "That was as much of a shock to me as it was to him, I think." She looks up at him, her eyes searching. "I suppose I made him laugh. He made me... He made me feel as if I might add to the world instead of being a black hole. Which was a first. And he never looked at me as if I were a pair of bossoms with legs. Which was also a first."

George can't think what to say to that.

"So, Georgie, did you bring all of those for me?" She points at the bouquets.

"Don't push it, Miss Bookkeeper. Start embezzling flowers and you'll be made redundant before the first petal hits the floor."

She smirks. "You'd never do that. I know where all your gold's hidden, and that bint cousin of yours, Prewett, won't be out of school till next June."

"True. And for all that she's family, you know Mafalda will never take your place in my heart. You know Susan's not here?" She nods. "So lucky you, you get to walk me down the aisle! Here's your flowers." He hands her one of the smaller bouquets. "Things still crazy upstairs?"

She snorts, staring at the nosegay. "You know, after watching your sister twitch like a cat in heat the morning of their wedding, I thought I'd gotten a feel for nuptial insanity. The Lovegood takes the cake."

"Is she dressed yet? Because I really, really don't need to see her bits on display again." How can Ron want... so little?

"Well, for such an untouched creature, our Luna is anything but modest. But yeah, I think Ginny finally shoved her into the gown."

"Untouched? You mean they haven't?..." That can't be. They've been together for three years! Bloody hell, no wonder Ron...!

"Yes, George, you are not the only Weasley boy whose plumbing is a bit backed up."

"Damn. No wonder Ron is curled up in a ball down in the garden." Daphne rolls her eyes, but her smile is as warm as it ever gets. George begins to climb past her. "Well, better get this over with. The guests are starting to arrive. As soon as Dad gets here we're going."

"Ah, waiting on the Minister. What else is new?" She pulls out another cigarette and stands. "I'll be right downstairs. Good luck, Boss."

"Thanks." It still seems odd, having a Slytherin for an employee and a friend. But she's certainly good for a laugh, is Daphne. And good at her job. George has the overflowing vault to prove it. And if Ginny trusts her--

The door flies open at the top of the stairs. Luna steps out, blessedly dressed in her full white regalia. Her face is beatific, the perfect blissful bride; the only thing that makes George nervous is his sister, who is standing behind her friend with a grimace of thin-lipped anxiety. "Hello, George," Luna says to a point over his shoulder somewhere just shy of Neptune. "It's a lovely day, isn't it? I'm going to kill myself, but I'd like you to make sure Ronald and the guests have a lovely day."

"Luna, sweetheart," Ginny says with the same kind of patient tone she employs with the nieces and nephews, "I think if you kill yourself neither Ron nor anyone else will enjoy the day very much at all."

"Really?" Luna looks deeply shocked at this news. She turns to George. "George, if I were to throw myself out the window, wouldn't you still be able to enjoy the day?"

Before George can even open his mouth, his sister shoots him a look of mingled pleading and imperious command that would do their mother proud. "Uh, no, Luna, if you tossed yourself out of the window, I think it'd put quite a damper on my afternoon, as a matter of fact." He looks over Luna's shoulder towards where Tonks is staring at herself in the mirror, changing her hair color to match the light purple robes, then to contrast, then to clash horribly.

"Oh," Luna says. She seems to be considering this deeply.

"Ron told me to say he loves you."

George regrets saying it as soon as the words leave his mouth. Luna's calm, pixilated façade cracks wide open, and suddenly her chin is quivering and she's blubbering like a three-year-old. "H-h-h-e l-l-l-loves me?" she wails. "I don't d-d-d-deserve... I'm t-t-too odd and t-t-too s-s-skinny and t-t-too..." Whatever else it is she thinks she's too much of, George doesn't find out, because she dissolves into wet howling.

Well, George thinks, at least she knows herself.

Ginny begins clucking at Luna in a very Mum-like way, and Penny comes up on Luna's other side, petting her arm. "Did you know, Luna," she says, Ravenclaw to Ravenclaw, "that brides in China wear red, not white, because white is the traditional color of mourning in East Asia? The red symbolizes..." She maneuvers Luna away like an over-articulated mannequin to Tonks and the vanity. The two sister-in-laws-to-be sit a blubbering Luna down, chat at her, begin to do her hair. As if it mattered.

Putting the flowers on a chest at the foot of the bed--no more single for Ronnikins--George mutters, "The enormous one's for Luna, obviously. Daphne and Fleur already have theirs." He looks over to Luna, who is sitting nearly catatonic under the care of Tonks and Penny. "I told Greengrass she's on. Good thing she had the regulation getup already because she's singing. Can't believe Susan really didn't show."

Ginny shushes him quietly, making sure Luna isn't listening. "Not such a shock. She hasn't been up for any of the weddings. Too painful. Said she had to work."

"Poor kid," George mutters with a shake of his head. "After all of this time..."

Touching his face, Ginny says, "Not that you're one to be pointing fingers." He winces involuntarily; Ginny sighs. "When Fred wakes up—"

" _If_ Fred wakes up," George says between tightly gritted teeth.

" _WHEN_ Fred wakes up," Ginny says, eyes glistening with that fierce determination that has always marked her limit, "do you want him to find that you've moped the whole time away, or do you think he's going to want to hear about the pranks you've played and the birds you've been seeing? Or do you really think all he's going to want to see is a balance sheet from the shop?"

A dull ache throbs just below George's throat. He can't think of anything to say, so he pulls his sister tight. "Happy bloody birthday, Gin-gin."

She tenses slightly in his grasp, and then relaxes. "I didn't think anyone'd remembered."

"What?" George jokes, "you thought the whole bloody fête was about those two nutters getting hitched? Dad's arranged a flyover by the Cannons later this afternoon."

"Ha-ha," Ginny mutters. "I hate parties on my birthday. I hate the bloody Cannons. Dad knows I'd kill him." She shakes her head. "When this is over, I think Harry and I have earned the right to get royally pissed."

"That you have, sis," George says. Ginny's face suddenly gets quite small. Interesting. "Oh, would it make you break down too if I told you your husband told me to tell _you_ he loved you?"

That evokes a quick smile and a barely perceptible blush. Definitely _won't_ be watching the garden bench tonight, nope. "Nah. Think I'll survive." She kisses him on the cheek. "But thanks."

George looks around Ron's old room. The place is barely recognizable--magically enlarged, ceiling raised, freshly painted. Not a trace of Cannon Orange to be found. Many, many, many sound-dampening charms on the walls, floor and door, thank Merlin. Even a new _en suite_. Clearly Mum and Dad are doing their best to keep Ron at home with his new bride. Not bloody likely. George gives them two months before they move out. It's a shame poor old Mr. Lovegood's house was...

"Tonks," Luna says from her throne at the vanity, her equilibrium (if that's what it is) apparently re-established, "I think you and Charlie should adopt."

The Auror's eyebrows bow to the point of breaking. "Uh, that's a great idea Luna. Cassie could use a brother."

"Cassie?" Luna muses.

"Uh." Tonks looks around to lock eyes with Ginny, but George's sister just shrugs and throws her hands up in dismay. Tonks looks down at Luna with an expression made up in equal parts of anxiety and wry amusement. "Cassie. The little hellion Charlie and I adopted last year?"

Luna pauses for a full ten seconds, and the whole room holds its collective breath, praying that she won't be overwhelmed by this not-so-new news. She isn't. "Oh," she says airily. "Cassiopeia. Her eyes are the same color as Dragontree bark."

Ginny buries her face in her brother's shoulder, whether to stifle laughter or a howl of disgust George isn't sure. He pulls her outside and gently shuts the door. "Never the same show twice."

A hysterical giggle escapes from Ginny. "Just tell me I wasn't this bad," she says, her head back on George's shoulder.

"Oh, but our mum told us we should we should never lie, Ginnikins." She looks up, scandalized. "You were bouncing around like a Kneazle overdosed on Pepper-up. It was exhausting. One would have thought you'd actually slept the night before."

She looks up at him, face round in shock as red slowly floods her features. "George... We... What? When did you?..."

George wishes he could enjoy this more. Wishes Fred could be here to see their unflappable sister utterly flapped. "All I can say, Gin, is when you and The Boy Who Bonked want a little together time, you might choose a spot a little further away from the house. Or at least on the other side from my window." Now the red washes out, replaced by flat pallor, a sure sign that he's hit home. "And on the night before your wedding, too! Mum would be _so_ disappointed if I..."

" _DON'T YOU DARE_ ," Ginny roars, and stares at him. Finally, shaking her head, she groans, "Oh, Merlin, George, I'm so sorry, we didn't think anyone was up..."

"Yeah, well, I don't sleep so much any more, and if I remember correctly it was hot as Hades and the crickets where having an orgy. Thank Merlin Ron and Luna didn't follow suit--it was still as glass last night." He grimaces. "I really don't think I could have taken that. Mind," he continues, "for a boy with a gammy leg, your Harry displayed remarkable--"

" _GEORGE_!"

"--stamina and flexibility." Her forehead clunks against his chest. "Oi, Gin-gin, don't muss the dress robes."

"Bloody hell," she mutters into his lapel.

A kiss on the top of the head. "'S all right. No permanent damage was done to my delicate eyes. And I promise not to tell Mum. Unless the provocation is too great."

She peers up at him, her expression blank, and George knows from long experience that he may have won this round, but he has no chance at all of winning the war. Still, it's nice to score a point against Ginny once in a while; without Fred...

"George? Someone walk over your grave?"

"Nah," he says, kissing her on the forehead. "Just thinking about _when_ Fred wakes up."

She kisses him back, full on the lips. "Love you, Gred."

"Love you too, Ginnikins." She smiles at him, but her face pales. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just tired." She looks ready to heave, actually. Interesting. "Butterflies. Luna must be rubbing off. So, Fred, could you head on down and see if Dad's here yet, and get the boys ready?"

"Your wish is my command, sister dearest." He says giving her the same Peeves salute. "But I'm not Fred, I'm George."

"Oh!" Now she really looks ready to puke. "George, I'm _so_ \--"

"C'mon. No problem." He pats her cheek and does his best to smile. "Now you go and guard the window. We don't want Luna hitting any of the guests on the way down."

Grinning at him wanly, she opens the door to the loony bin.

When he reaches the landing outside his room, he is surprised once again. Not by Daphne, this time--by the other Slytherin in his life, Mafalda Prewett, and by Fleur's little sister. They are staring up at him with matching smirks. "Didn't anyone tell you two it's not polite to eavesdrop?"

Mafalda's smile is just on the goofy side of really evil. "Oh, we weren't listening, George. We were getting an eyeful."

"Of what?" Actually, George has an idea, but really is hoping he's wrong.

"Your sister's lovely in lavender, silly." Mafalda waggles her black eyebrows.

Nope, not wrong. "Ewww, Maf... That's my sister you're perving on, and your bloody _cousin_ , when it comes to that!"

"Third cousin, once removed." Leave it to the accountant's daughter to have the maths worked out. "That's not any closer than your mum and dad. And I think Ginny's virtue is safe from me." Gabrielle smiles at her, glowing as is her wont.

"Uh-huh. Well, watch out for Fleur; none of my concern, but she's none too happy that you're corrupting _her_ sister."

Mafalda peers over her glasses.

"Is it Mafalda's fault that I 'ave ensnared 'er with my Veela charms?" Now it is Gabrielle's turn to look wicked.

George shakes his head and looks at the two of them, the elegant blonde and the mop-haired, bespectacled brunette. As recently as his own school days, this would have been impossible--not two girls dating, though he couldn't remember any being terribly open about it, but a Gryffindor and a Slytherin. When did that change? Was this what they fought for? Could be. "Look, have a great time, but let me tell you from years of experience--the getting yelled-at part is no fun, no matter how fun the thing was that you're being yelled at about." He leans forward. "So whatever you have in mind, just don't get caught, all right?"

Both girls giggle. "We'll try," Mafalda says. "Oh, your dad's here. Ron's wearing a trench out in the garden and Harry wanted us to ask you if the girls were ready."

Show time. "Okay. Thanks. Could you tell Harry that they're as ready as they'll ever be, and that I'll be down once I've told them it's time?"

Both girls nod and wander down the narrow stairs, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.

George walks to the door to his and Fred's old room. When Fred comes back. WHEN Fred comes back.

The door opens a crack, and before George has a chance to respond, a hand snakes out, grabs his wrist, and pulls him in.

Alicia is standing there, decked out for a wedding. Which makes sense. On either side of her, their arms crossed, are Angelina and Katie, also bedecked. All three look ready for battle.

"Uh, hullo, girls."

"Hullo, George," Alicia says, a smile playing on her lips though no warmth is in her eyes. "We've decided it's time."

"Time?" he says, barely.

Angelina reaches out and strokes his cheek; the Quidditch calluses make him shiver. "It's been five years, George, since you did anything but work, sleep or act nothing at all like the George Weasley we know and love."

Katie twirls her wand against his hip. "It's been seven years since you and Fred showed us what a good time really looked like."

"So, Boss," Alicia continues, walking very close to him; her perfume makes him light-headed, or perhaps it is her proximity, "since the three of us are currently... unentangled, and since we all agree that you badly need to remember what a good time looks like yourself, as soon as this wedding is done, and we've all had a chance to toast Ron and Luna's health, we are dragging you back up here and..."

"Girls," George whimpers, "I..."

Alicia kisses him gently, and he whimpers again; Katie's small, bowed lips follow, and then Angelina's sensuous, sensual ones. He can only groan.

Angelina strokes his face again, this time with the soft back of her hand. "We all love him, George. We all miss him. But you can't stop living because he's still staring at the ceiling in St. Mungo's. C'mon." She runs her hand down his chest.

He can feel himself collapsing inward, can feel that tears are going to overtake him, that he's going to disappear like a puff of wet flame. He can't.

Alicia gives him a long, easy hug. Over her shoulder, Katie whispers into his ear, "Don't make us tie you up."

"Okay," he says with an attempt at a smile. "If you insist."

"Good," says Katie. "Though I was looking forward to the tying-up bit. See you," she says, kisses him on the cheek, and leaves.

"See you," say the other two, and follow Katie out the door.

He stares around the room that he shared with Fred for nearly eighteen years. The beds haven't been remade in years; Mum's dusting spells have kept the space tidy. There's a big picture up between the two beds of him and Fred, pushing each other and waving from behind the till at Weasey's Wizarding Wheezes, each grinning madly, each showing off his ridiculous Dragonskin coat, but otherwise the room feels empty. Dead.

George sits on Fred's bed and touches the pillow and the tears start to come pouring out, spasmic, geyserish floods of tears, and George finds that he is embracing the pillow and weeping into it. Weeping five years worth of uncried tears.

After five minutes, or perhaps ten, George sits up, feeling odd. Twenty pounds lighter, but still, odd. He stands up and looks at his reflection in the glass that covers the picture. The Fred and George in the picture make fun of his hair, his blotchy skin. He casts some quick charms, runs his finger through his hair, straightens his robes, and heads up to Ron's room.

Luna is seated at the foot of the bed. Her bed. Her bouquet is held loosely in her hands and her veil is draped over her spun-silver hair. She looks calm, angelic. Beautiful. "Wow," George says.

"Hello, George," Luna says, her moonshine gaze directly on him now.

"Uh," George manages. "Where's Ginny?"

"We were wondering where you'd gotten to! She's in the loo," Tonks laughs. Beside her, Penny is smiling primly.

"I'm here," says Ginny, stumbling out of the WC with a complexion that would be best described as seafoam.

"You look awful," George says.

"Thanks," Ginny grumbles. "So do you." She picks up her nosegay with a trembling hand.

"So," George says, businesslike again. "Dad's here. Fleur and Daphne are both ready downstairs. You lot ready to go?"

The three bridesmaids look to Luna, who smiles and says, "Of course."

"Let's bring you down to the kitchen--you'll wait there." They follow him down the stairs, the two older women giddy, Ginny a bit wobbly, and Luna with an otherworldly glide.

When they arrive on the ground floor, Penny's son Billy stares at them all, dumbstruck. "Auntie Luna," he says, "you look be-yootiful."

Cassiopeia nods her little mop of curls, focusing first on her mother, then on Luna. " _Booofullbooboobooful_!"

"Thank you, Cassiopeia," Luna says. "Thank you, Bilius."

Fleur and Daphne come up behind the two toddlers. "Come along, _enfants_ ," Fleur says with a mother's practiced authority. " _Tristan_ and _Conduiramours_ are both waiting for you outside to scatter the flowers."

Cassie's face collapses into an exaggerated frown.

"'S alright, Cassie-love," Tonks says, her eyes sparkling. "You can pick up the petals after you drop them if you want."

"Yes," Luna says, "that would be lovely. Then you can always remember when your uncle Ronald and I were married."

Their expressions suddenly very serious--Cassie's oversized jowls make this very amusing indeed--the two children walk out to where George knows that Mum is acting as chief kidlet wrangler.

"All right," George says to the bride and her attendants, "I'm going to go check in with the boys. Once I know Ron's ready--and he was ready hours ago--and Dad's ready, I'll activate my DA Galleon. Daphne's and Ginny's will warm up, and that's the sign that it's time to go. Remember the order to enter in, and Daph, I'll wait for you to finish at the back, okay?"

Six heads nod in unison, two blonde, two brunette, one redhead and one... deep purple. "Knock 'em dead, guys. Congratulations, Luna." And before the girls start to get weepy, as he's sure some of them will, he skeedadles out the garden door to where several hundred guests have found their ways to their chairs--Bill, Charlie and Percy must have been working double-time, because Harry is still calming Ron.

George strides out of the house, and all of the guests crane their necks around, sensing big things to come. Surreptitiously, George flashes his dad a thumbs-up, there at the front of the crowd where his Aurors are ready to Portkey him away at the first sign of trouble. _Ready to go_?

Resplendent in his ceremonial robes and his lime green bowler, Arthur Weasley nods. George walks beside his mother, who is cheerfully manhandling the fine-dressed midgets. "Ready, Mum?"

Beaming, Molly Weasley nods as well. Charlie and Bill are standing at the back of the aisle, obstructing the view of their youngest, tallest brother. Each flashes a thumbs-up as George walks past, then rolls his eyes and flicks his head at Ron.

Ron looks as if he's seen a ghost--no, as if he's seen a spider, a _really big_ spider. "When you didn't come back, I was worried," he burbles.

"She loves you, you prat." Relief floods into Ron's face. "All set, Harry."

Ron's best friend nods slowly.

"Your wife told me to tell you she loves you, too," George says, and then he leans forward and whispers, "just not on the bench here, please?"

Harry's eyes go very wide, and George celebrates quietly--he has gotten the better of Ginny and Harry, both on the same day. Not bad at all. "Let's go then," he barks, before Harry can think of a comeback. He taps his wand on the coin in his pocket and then on the enchanted gramophone behind the garden bench. Wagner's "Wedding March" begins, and Harry pulls Ron to his feet, and the groom and the other ushers process, joining Dad up by the altar.

Once all five men are there--Harry's black hair the only blot in a sea of red--Fleur leads the bridesmaids up the aisle, each opposite her husband. Once Ginny has shakily taken her place, Mum gives a loud "Now!" and the four Weasley grandkids toddle up the aisle, three dumping flowers by the fistful, Cassie gathering them up almost as fast. When they have made their way to the front--to much cooing and awing from the crowd--Mum whisks them off to the side, where a Silencing Charm has been cast on a play area where they can watch the festivities without disrupting. Damn, George thinks, we do this really well.

Daphne stands opposite him at the top of the aisle, her usual smirk gone. She gives him a nod, and George prods the gramophone with his wand again. This time a quiet piano sounds. Her voice low and dulcet, Daphne sings: "No more talk of darkness, forget these wide-eyed fears, I'm here, nothing can harm you..." The voice that bursts out of her is far too smooth and gorgeous to be hers, and yet it is.

It's a Muggle song, Luna's favorite, and she walks between them and up the aisle to Ron, crying and smiling that same beatific smile. As Luna reaches the altar and steps next to Ginny, just opposite Ron, Daphne's voice soars into the chorus, and for a moment George and every other person present forgets to breathe. Really, why do people weep at weddings? Why? We've seen it before. We'll probably see it again, if not for quite a while. Ah, well.

The song ends and George casts the Finite on the gramophone. Daphne gives him a nod, breathes a huge sigh of relief, and leads him up the aisle.

Mum is standing over by the little ones, her face aflood. There's Mafalda and Gabrielle, weeping on each other's shoulders. Seamus Finnigan is bawling into the long neck of Natalie McDonald--bless the Irish. Daph sneaks a wave at Anthony Goldstein, who is sitting dumbstruck three rows from the back. And there's Ron and Luna, each looking ready to lift off. George has never seen either of them more alive. Damn.

When George and Daphne have taken their places at the outside of the V of the wedding party--George mouths _Wow_! to Daphne, who smirks, but looks pleased--Dad steps forward, and silence falls. The only noise is the rustle of silk and an occasional bee taking advantage of late summer's glories.

"Dearly beloved," Dad intones, "we are gathered here today in the sight of Heaven to bear witness to the union of this man, my son Ronald, to this woman, my goddaughter Luna. Marriage being an honorable state, it is not to be entered into lightly..." The book snaps shut and Dad clears his throat. "Which is very true," he continues in a very conversational tone. "Definitely not to be entered into lightly. But... And here's the thing: I'm not much of a fan of weddings. Oh, I've officiated at hundreds of them, including those of three of my other children. But as lovely as they are--and Daphne dear, that song really was quite superb." There's scattering of polite applause, but the crowd is still stunned, uncertain just where he's going. Typical Dad. Mum'll kill him. "Lovely as they are, they are simply an outward sign of a commitment that has nothing to do with the exchange of rings or vows of faith. And if the commitment isn't there, believe me, the wedding can be lovely and the feast glorious, but the marriage won't be any more successful." He pushes his glasses up and glances over toward his wife, who is standing, mouth wide. No, Mum would not be pleased. "My own wedding to my wonderful Molly was attended only by my parents and her brothers. It was performed by the local priest at St. Catchpole's, a lovely old Muggle if ever there was one. And yet I can honestly say that the lack of ostentation did not take one jot from my love for Molly Prewett or her love for me, and the fact that her parents couldn't even be fussed to come--and it's lovely to see so many of my wife's family here today." He waves to Mafalda and her relations. "None of that alters the fact that our marriage has been a successful one, built on pillars of love, mutual respect, trust, compassion--with a bit of passion too--and a good sense of humor besides. Marriage is a journey that starts long before a day like this, and carries on, we dearly hope and trust, for many, many decades into the future. It is not a place at which one arrives or a point in time at which the couple can rest easy."

He gazes at Luna and Ron. "These two have never been able to rest easy. In the late war, they lost more than any of us, even many who are older, can imagine. And yet in all of that loss, they found each other, and began to tread the path that led them down this aisle and will lead them on into the future. Trust me, Ron and Luna, you are blessed that you have found each other, and we are fortunate to know you. This wedding is more our celebration of your partnership than any bonding that I or any higher power could fashion. Tread the path well, children."

He sniffs, blinks, and opens the book again. George sees Katie, Alicia and Angelina sitting at the very back, passing a handkerchief back and forth. "Well, enough of me--that's what happens when you get a green hat, can't hear enough of your own voice."

Ron and Luna seem barely to notice that he had spoken. Their eyes are locked. Oh, Merlin, thought George. When did that happen?

"Here we go," said Dad. "Do you, Ronald take this woman Luna..."

***

Sunlight slants in through the dirty St. Mungo's windows. Susan Bones knows that at this moment two of her good friends are probably in the midst of tying the knot, but she is just where she would have chosen to be--where she _did_ choose to be: finishing her afternoon rounds on the Janus Thickey Ward, running Fred Weasley through the muscle conditioning spells that keep him in good shape.

Susan isn't sure why it gives her such satisfaction to work with a patient who shows so little hope for improvement. She can remember him from her first years at Hogwarts as a somewhat scary clown--funny things were always happening around Fred and his brother, but it was hard not to be a little frightened that some of them might happen to _you_. Then, during her fifth year, she got to know Fred and the rest of the DA gang, and she saw the Weasley twins through fresh eyes, through what Aunt Amelia calls very seriously "the blind vision of Justice." From the very first meeting at the Hog's Head, she realized that Fred had a very different side--serious, protective of his family and his friends. That impressed her almost as much as Harry's quiet strength and those gorgeous green eyes, or Neville...

Oh.

She had gotten to know Neville through taking all of those years of Herbology together, and had always been struck by his sweetness, his kindness. As their fifth and sixth years had progressed and they'd become comrades through the DA, however, he had become a real friend, and once her idiotic infatuation with Harry had worn off--the subject of many tear-and-giggle girl-talks with Ginny Weasley--she had realized that Neville, her good, wonderful friend Neville had grown into a handsome man and a powerful wizard in his own right. And oh, that boy's hands...

Oh.

And here is Fred Weasley, still alive but... Still. Fred Weasley, who epitomized the word _animated_. Quick with a smile and a joke, quick to defend those he loved. Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling for five years. Unmoving.

"There, Fred," she says, running her hand along one of his square shoulders as the muscles are finally let loose by the spell, "you are looking very well today." Yes, very well. She quickly massages his arm, working out the knots that another day of inactivity have tied. "Your brother Ron is getting married today, you know. Luna Lovegood, bless them both. They're so lucky to have found..."

Oh. Blast. Susan hates to cry, hates the feeling of giving in to an exercise that is so _pointless_. Tears never take away the cause of sorrow, and do little to alleviate the feeling of sorrow itself, and yet here she is, weeping on Fred Weasley's broad chest, seeking the warm proximity of someone who is, as far as she or any of the other Healers can tell, utterly unaware of her presence.

When the tears begin to subside, Susan leans back and looks into his face, his unwavering, startling blue eyes. "Oh, Sleeping Beauty," she murmurs. "It's time to wake up."

And then she leans forward and does something she has thought of before but promised herself a million times she would never do: she presses her lips to his, slack as they are, and kisses him.

It is almost as pointless an exercise as weeping had been before, but Susan can be forgiven if she imagines a spark between them, a flare of magic, of love, of... Oh, she really does need to stop reading those novels. But it feels good to kiss him, good to feel his steady breath beneath her, his belly rising beneath her hand.

What was that?

She runs her fingers along his belly again, her lips still pressed to his, but focusing now on her hand.

A twitch.

Oh.

She leans back and looks at him. His eyes are still focused elsewhere, his face still loose. And yet she has just felt a movement. She knows that that is impossible. But it is so. Leaning close again, she whispers into his ear, "Sleeper, awake."

And she kisses him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Wolfram von Eshcenbach's _Parzival_ , the story on which Wagner's opera was based, and my favorite of the Arthurian romances, Parcival (whose name does in fact mean 'pierce the valley'--and you can take that whichever way you like) marries a beautiful queen named Condwiramurs. In French that works out to conduire amours, "to lead/drive loves." It seemed like something Bill and Fleur might name their daughter, especially after they named the first one Tristan.


	6. When

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Weasley Clan gets busy again.... (If you prefer to see the result of all this business, you can just go straight to the next chapter!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to aberforths_rug for the beta. Trust me--you're really glad she beta'd this one!

_11 August, 2003, midnight_

"You look terrified," Ginny giggles, throwing a leg over Harry's naked hip.

Grumpily, he casts a heating spell on the floor and rearranges the cloak on which he's lying. "I'm cold, love. I still can't believe George _saw_ us that night on the bench."

Ginny laughs and leans forward, pressing herself against the warm coolth of him. "Well, I promise, unless he's Far-scrying, he won't see us out here." They are in Ginny's old tree house, far up in an ancient oak next to the Burrow's paddock.

Harry pushes up against her, his lips capturing hers, his hands moving easily over her bum, her ribs. "Happy birthday, love."

She laughs again, delighted this time. "Well, at least _you_ remembered! I doubt Ron and Luna have any idea."

He snakes his tongue into her ear as his thumbs find her nipples and she gives a small shiver, but not of cold. "Thought you didn't _like_ to celebrate your birthday."

She pants, "Just the whole cake-and-presents thing. Just. Never made. Any sense. No one ever. GavemewhatI _wanted_." His teeth clamp around one nipple and she screams, shuddering to a small orgasm.

Her breasts aren't usually so sensitive.

He presses against her, his head finding her damp, open sex of its own accord. "And what do you want, Birthday Girl?" He reaches down between them with one hand, his fingers brushing through her pubic tangle, a featherlight graze of her lips.

Her clit buzzes with need, and she knows she will be coming again soon. "Oh, Harry. You know what I want."

And he grasps onto his cock and presses up into her and each moans. After all of these years, after all of these fucks, the feeling of his shaft spreading up into her, of her tight sheath rippling over him is as overwhelming as it was when they were kids. Neither of them is prone to swearing, but at moments like this, profanity seems the only language, and they curse lovingly into each other's ear as their bodies begin to rock together.

He's already come once, her fingers doing amazing things, and so he is able to watch in awe as she leans back, just two minutes or so on, and begins to let out the low, deep _Ahs_ that tell him she is once again on the verge of coming. Their pubic bones grind together, and Harry's fingers pull gently at her nipples and suddenly her entire body flexes, and her cunt pulses hard around his cock. " _FuckfuckfuckFUCK_!"

She feels a drop of sweat fall from her nose and watches it splatter on his chin as she gasps for air. He slows his thrusts--"Merlin, Harry, don't stop!"--and gazes up at her, the glasses discarded with their clothes, her own private ocean.

"Ginny," he murmurs. "Wow! Are you?..."

She nods and grins and begins to rock against him slowly again. Once she has caught her breath she lowers herself against him, feeling her breasts against his chest, letting him thrust into her. Into his ear she whispers wetly, "Since it's my birthday, can we try something new tonight?"

"New?" he moans. "What in the hell haven't we tried?"

Again she leans back off of him, sees his eyes wide--no doubt there, just trust and curiosity. Stretching to one side, she gets her wand, then casts a couple of quick charms, feels them take effect. With a very liquid _plop_ she disengages from him--he whimpers.

"Shhh," she murmurs, grasping his slick shaft. "I think you'll like this." Closing her eyes, she lowers herself onto him again, not against her cunt lips this time, but pressing his cock up between her bum cheeks.

Those ocean eyes go wide.

Breathing deeply, she relaxes her rosebud, and Harry has to chew the insides of his cheeks to restrain himself from thrusting straight up into her bottom.

They've played around with this sort of thing before, fingers and wands, but it never occurred to Harry...

She feels the thick head of his cock--did it feel this huge even the first time?--plop past her sphincter and they both hiss.

"Ohh, Godgodgodginny!"

"Shhh," she murmurs, chewing on her lip, slowly wriggling her arse down onto him. "Just-- _Ah!_ \--stay still... till I can... get used to you." She is chewing on her lower lip, her face dark with lust and concentration, and he wants for all the world to eat her alive.

Slowly, inch by inch--and neither has ever been so aware of the exact length of his cock--she engulfs him, until she feels his pubic hair tickling her wide-open, sticky quim. With a triumphant grin, she opens her eyes. "I have you now. You're all mine."

"Always have been," he pants. Passive as he has been, he is sweating too, and he keeps blinking it out of his eyes. Reaching down across her thigh with his thumb, he brushes her nub.

Sensitive and over-stimulated, she jumps, her anus tightening hard around the base of his shaft, bringing a deep moan from them both. She pulls his hand away. "Too much," she groans. "Just fuck... Fuck my arse, Harry. It feels amazing."

And so slowly, as gently as he can manage, Harry begins to thrust into her bottom. "Bloody hell, Ginny... Where the fuck did you get _this_ idea?"

She grins ferally. "I don't think you want to know." Silently thanking Bill for the Lubricus and Relaxo charms, Ginny giggles, and they both groan as she tightens around him again.

Soon she can see that he is close--his chin juts and his brows crease. Reaching back and gently palming his balls, she says breathily, "Harry, love. There's another surprise I have-- _Ah!_ "

Grunting, he locks his eyes on hers, ready for anything.

"Harry-- _shit!--_ I think... I think I'm

  
  
  


expecting someone else?" Luna murmurs. She is standing in the bathroom door, backlit. Wearing nothing at all but her wedding veil and the white thigh-high stockings that Ginny had bought her. The light shines through the small gap at the top of her legs and it is very apparent that she has removed her pubic hair.

Ron's jaw hits his chest. "N-n-no."

"You've seen me naked before, Ronald." So much looking, so little touching...

"Y-yes." He can feel pre-come leaking over his foreskin, soaking his brand new silk pyjamas.

"Do you like what you see?" She glides toward bed, long legs unwinding like clock springs as she walks. The slide of her thighs over her hairless vulva feels like ice cream, and she likes it.

Not trusting his mouth, he nods quickly; the action makes the silk of his pyjama trousers rub against his cock and his balls twitch.

She crawls onto the bed, fascinated by the wet spot growing around what she knows to be his lovely penis. She is ready now. "Ronald, I was frightened at first when I thought of you fucking me. But I'm not, now. I want to fuck you, Ronald. Please fuck me."

Whether it is the open, hungry look on her face or the whisp of veil floating up the inside of his thigh, that does it: Ron explodes like one of George's fireworks, spurting through the orange silk, howling, "OH

  
  
  


_shit_ , that feels good, Charlie, fucking hell!" Tonks tries to pull Charlie's face harder against her crotch but he pulls away, a fucking Weasley grin across that fucking Weasley face of his. " _Charlie_!"

"D'you ever fantasize about other blokes, Tonks?" He still has one finger pulsing inside of her. He can feel her quiver every time he bends it.

"Shit, Charlie, what?"

"Well, whenever you take my dick in that talented mouth of yours, I never know whose face it is I'm going to be fucking. So clearly you like to fantasize..." Just to tease her, he blows over her clit and gets a deep groan for his effort. "So I was just wondering, if it wasn't me here, nibbling on your bits, who would you want it to be?"

She can't believe he's pulling this, just when she was _so_ close. "Fuck you, Charlie!" He begins to withdraw his magic finger and she whimpers. Reward and punishment. Oh, shit. "Fine, fine... Um..."

Grinning at her capitulation, he slips his finger back into her and circles her clit with his thumb for good measure. "Is it Bill?"

"What?" she barks, and the finger begins to slide out again. "No, no, none of your brothers, fucking Christ in a hammock, I got the best of the lot."

He slides the finger back in once again and runs his tongue up her labia.

As he laughs, pleased with her reaction, she mutters, "And the cruelest, Shite-head."

"Oh, I'll have to punish you for that... later. But what I want to know," he continues, fascinated at the way the inner muscles of her pelvis are working against his hand, "is _who_. Remus?"

She moans, feels her cunt squeezing his hand of its own accord. "Sexy fuck," she says breathlessly, "but too old... and, uh..."

"And not around. Sorry." Reward time. He kisses her nubbin gently, flicking his tongue lightly between his lips and evoking a gasp. "Another girl?"

She tries to arch against his mouth and growls as he backs away. "We'll talk about _your_ fucking fantasies another fucking time, okay, Weasley?"

"Younger guy then?"

She whimpers.

"Really?" Not Ron, she's already said... "Is it... Harry?"

Closing her eyes, she moans.

"Bloody..." Stunned that he actually guessed it, he almost forgets to reward his wife. He takes the blade of his tongue and runs the entire length of it against her clit.

Another moan, this time higher. "Shit, Charlie, oh, that's so... AHHHH!"

Once again, he disengages his mouth. "Not Charlie. Harry. I'm Harry."

She is close to tears now. "Please, please... Oh fuck, fine, _please, Harry_ , let me come, it feels so good..." He takes her clit into his own oh-so-talented mouth and soon she will call him just about anything just so long as... "OHGODHARRYDON'TSTOP, Harry, I've wanted this so fucking much, _fuck_ , Harry, it's about _FUCKING_

  
  
  


time, _Guillaume_."

"What?" Bill blinks; he is starting to doze. Too much mead at the reception.

Fleur looks at him, exhausted too. But her wand is glowing purple, and they both know what that means. " _C'est le temp. Viens_." She reaches down his pyjama pants and fondles his dormant penis.

He flops back against his pillow and moans, but it isn't exactly desire. "Wow, Fleur." Grinning, he reaches up and touches her face, traces the fine line that has begun to etch itself into her forehead--she calls it Bilius, which amuses him no end. "You up for this?"

"Pfff," she says, leaning her forehead against his. "I must be an old English lady. A little wine, a little dancing with my 'usband and I am nickered."

He kisses her nose. "Knackered. C'mon. Lie down. Turn away... Yes." He rolls her on her side, facing away from him, and pulls her tight, so that her bum, no longer so bony, is tight against him, his chest against her back. His fingers stroke her hip; the bicep of the other arm serves as her pillow.

"Mmm, _Guillaume_ , you make me so _comfortable_ , I will go right to sleep and we miss the month."

"Shh," he murmurs into her hair, and his free hand begins to work its way under her silk nightgown. "Maybe if we do this nice and quiet, we'll get a nice, quiet kid for a change, _oui_?"

"Pfff" she says again, but this time there is a small laugh to the dismissal, and she shivers as his fingers make their way over her belly. "If you can keep me awake, _Guillaume_ , you can 'ave me any way you want me. You know that."

"Mmm," Bill growls into her ear. "Yes, I do. Can I tell you an interesting idea I was mulling over when I saw you out there in your little lavender confection?" With thumb and pinkie, he delicately circles both areolae.

She gives a soft hiss before answering. "Ah? What sort of an idea were you 'aving in front of your entire family and two 'undred guests?"

"A really, really nasty one." The fingertips flick across her nipples.

Her breasts are no longer so exquisitely responsive as they used to be--Tristan and Condie have seen to that--but she still gasps. "Is that so? Then I would love to 'ear this really nasty idea."

"I thought you might," he says, grinning, teasing her nipples just a bit more before saying, "I like fucking you, you know."

"Ah! _Oui_ , I... I got the idea."

One last flick and his hand begins to move very slowly south. "Well, how would you," riffling through pubic hair, "like to get the chance," parting her legs, "to fuck _me_ for a change?" His index and pointer fingers slide along either side of her slowly slickening, slowly stiffening little shaft of a clit.

" _Hein_?" He's got her attention now, and as her buttocks clamp involuntarily around his own rising erection, he realizes that she has his.

"One of the Egyptian gods was an hermaphrodite with the wonderful name of Hapi. Now one of the more interesting ceremonies in his or her worship involved the priestesses in Hapi's cult taking turns fucking each other silly." He is playing with her the way that he has watched her play with herself, a simple movement of the fingers up and down the length of her lips. When she doesn't interject, he continues. "You may wonder how they managed this. I discovered, during my last year down in the Valley of the Kings, a fresco that described in detail a spell that was used for causing the clitoris of one of the priestesses to grow to the size and shape of a small penis. And with this lovely instrument they would give and receive pleasure, all in their sexually ambiguous deity's name."

Sighing, she pulls the hand that has been resting beneath her head and attaches it to her right breast.

"So, _chèrie_ , how would you like to take me over the couch in the sitting room, fuck me till we're both screaming, fucking my arse with your clit till we're both crying with pleasure?" She reaches down and begins to yank at his pyjamas. "Would you like that?"

" _Ah! Oui_!" Fleur cries, grabbing on to his now stiff cock and guiding it to the entrance to her pussy. As he enters her slowly they both gasp. Fleur cries, " _Ah! Guillaume! Tu es si... si..._ It is... _AH!_ So

  
  
  


long, _chèrie, ah_!" Gabrielle groans as Mafalda's fingers thrust into her, her mouth feasting on Gabrielle's nipples. Clenching her own fingers in the other girl's short hair, she melts into a shuddering release like none she has ever before felt. " _Ah, mon dieu, mon dieu_." She lifts Mafalda up and into a deep wet kiss.

Pressing Gabrielle against the Burrow's ancient bathroom mirror, Mafalda speaks through the kiss. "Oh, Merlin, Gabi, you're so beautiful, you so amazing, I... I wish..."

"What do you wish, _chèrie_? Would you?..." She straightens Mafalda's glasses. "I would like to give you an _orgasme_. But can you?..."

"Oh, Merlin, Gabrielle, I want that, but I..." Tears are beginning to well up. Damn. Slytherins don't cry. "I don't know, Gabi, how can I know?"

"Know?" Gabi stares at her girlfriend uncertainly.

"I've never felt like this. Ever. How can I?..." Wet blurs Mafalda's vision.

"Ah. Because I am Veela."

The dark-haired girl nods, ashamed.

"Ah, _chèrie_..." Gabrielle smiles a little sadly and shakes her head so that her hair cascades around her shoulders. The color of her eyes suddenly deepens and yet some inner light glistens in their depths.

Mafalda gulps.

" _Mafalda_ ," Gabi says in a voice that is both musical and hypnotic--Mafalda feels as if she has never really _heard_ her name before--" _I want you to tell me you 'ate me and then leave the room_."

Mafalda blinks. "What?"

" _Tell me I disgust you and then go away_."

Mafalda shakes her head--not in refusal, because how could she refuse?--but to clear it. "But..." She looks into those cobalt eyes. "No."

Gabi's eyebrows shoot up. " _Non_?"

"No!" Mafalda says, more certainly now. "I... I _don't_ hate you, Gabrielle, you know that."

Suddenly Gabrielle's face seems smaller, her eyes less magical if no less brilliant. "Do I?"

" _Yes_ , Gabrielle, you do." Mafalda's hands close on either side of that gorgeous face. "Gabi, I... I

  
  
  


love you, you silly man, now just... Oooo!"

Arthur catches up to Molly and begins to tickle her again. "And, Molly?"

She falls onto their bed, setting the draperies swaying, but his attack does not let up. "And... And..." she wheezes between howls of laughter. "And you're the Minister of Bloody Magic and you can say--Hee!--whatever you bloody well please at ceremonies. HA!"

Finally he stops; he is himself out of breath, and Molly is red from her toes to her head and every beautiful, rounded bit in between. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

She bursts into laughter again, only stopped when he climbs up with her and kisses her hard. Their bodies slide together and his hands find her battle-hardened breasts, the twin altars at which he has worshiped for over thirty years, and her leg catches the back of his so that she can feel his slowly swelling manhood against her round belly. "Speaking of which, Arthur, my love..."

Speaking of what, Molly, dear?" He leans down and takes a plump nipple into his mouth, running the hand that's been freed down over the beloved round bottom and back between where moisture is beginning to make itself known.

"Of hardness, Arthur." Her own hand finds his penis and grasps it. He grunts. "If you promise me never to give me another heart attack like you did this afternoon, what I really, really want the Minister for Magic to do right now is

  
  
  


fuck me, slave!"

"Yes, Mistress!" With trembling hands, Percy begins to undo the black leather halter that girds his loins. A warning stroke from the flog stops him.

"Did I say that you could get yourself ready first, slave?" Penny grins, running the wooden handle of the flog over her nipples.

"No, Mistress!' Percy whimpers, groveling.

"Do _I_ look ready to receive my pleasure?"

"No, Mistress!" Quivering, he abases himself between her legs.

"As punishment for your presumption, you must now bring me to release using only your nose. Do you hear me, slave? If so much as a finger or a chin or a _tongue_ touches my most private parts, or if you should happen to touch yourself, your punishment shall be severe indeed!" Just to punctuate the statement, she brings the magically softened flog across his naked, pale back again and he writhes. It's so hard not to giggle, but he does so love this game.

"I love to serve, Mistress, I will please you as you wish, Mistress, thank

  
  
  


you, oh, Merlin!" George is not at all sure whose mouth is milking his cock, though he's fairly sure it's not Alicia's, since she's snogging the hell out of him. He thinks it must be Angelina, since only Katie's tongue is small and long enough to work its way up... BLOODY HELL!

After five years of polishing his own broomstick, the orgasm that they bring him to can only be described as volcanic. It feels as if every drop of fluid in his body is being squeezed out through his cock, and once it's been ejected he feels empty, a shell. He collapses, and the three girls collapse around him. "Bloody hell. Oh, fuck. Oh, thank you. Oh, Merlin..."

They kiss him and nuzzle him, sightless as he is. Swallowing with some difficulty, Angelina wonders if perhaps that was all it will take--is the Genie back out of the bottle? Katie and Alicia begin kissing her neck and breasts, and she realizes that, as much as she managed to swallow, there is plenty that escaped. It's really nice to feel those mouths on her boobies again. It's been a long time...

And then, without warning, George begins to sob. He curls up into a ball on his side and howls, tears and snot running onto the sheets.

Angelina and Katie look to Alicia, who's spent more time with him. Does he do this often? But she shrugs and shakes her head--she's never seen him cry before, not even after the battle at the Ministry where Fred was wounded. Suddenly, they all three feel very naked, and are very aware of his nakedness.

"It... It's okay, George," Katie says, though she doesn't think he seems okay at all. What the hell do you do with a weeping Weasley?

"George?" Angelina asks, feeling quite overwhelmed by everything that's happening here. "Would you like us to?..." She starts to back off of the narrow bed.

"NO!" George screams and throws his arms around her hips, his head tight against her Quidditch-hard belly.

Uncertainly, the three women close in around him, encircle him, and he climbs limply into their laps, still weeping, but weakly now.

"Shh, George," Alicia says, stroking his back soothingly. "Don't worry. We're here. We'll

  
  
  


take care of you, Fred," Susan whispers. Her rosemary soap smell fills the dark air around his bed.

What the fuck's she doing here? It's night... isn't it?

For the past four years, five days a week, Fred could count on spending two blessed hours in the afternoon being rubbed and stroked and clucked over by lovely, soft, sweet Susan Bones. Always in the afternoon.

Those hours have kept him sane. When his mind begins to wander over and over and over ideas for jokes for the shop and the bloody battle at the Ministry where Dolohov had cursed him--George had got him, son of a bitch--to that first night when he and George and the girls had fucked each other silly... They'd done it again, but it had never topped that first night. Since he was first brought to St.Mungo's, he has walked the hallways and rooms of his memory, examining every chink, every corner. He could draw a map of Hogwarts that he would swear was accurate to the inch. If he could draw.

All of the thoughts and memories and fears and obsessions and Susan would appear every weekday afternoon for two hours and talk to him like a human being, not like the other Healers, he was just a slab of meat to them, no, she would tell him about his family and her family and how Neville died and how she hadn't been able to love... and she would touch him and stand where he could see her, her sad, soft face...

Fred could remember her as a kid, oval-faced and solemn with her bloody plait and her big tits and Fred remembered having some really nasty thoughts about tying her up with her Hufflepuff tie, little fifth year as she was. But she'd been in love with Harry like the rest of them, and then Neville, and Angie could suck the rind off an Ironfig.

"Fred," she whispers, "I've managed to trade shifts because... Because I think you did something this afternoon, and I... I want to make sure I'm not going round the twist, Fred, honestly. I want you well so badly, you see..." She leans close to him, looking him in the eye, that deep, sincere gaze. "I'm going to kiss you again, Fred. I'm sorry I did that before, I couldn't even ask if you mind, but I need to know if you really did respond because if you did..." She closes her eyes, takes a deep, steadying breath, and kisses him again.

Oh, Merlin, Merlin, Morgana and Dumbledore too. The feel of those warm lips against his. He wants... He wants to kiss her back, to throw his arms around her and press her to him, to feel those lovely breasts against his chest, beneath his hands, to spread her white thighs and thrust into her until she was crying with desire and delight...

She gasps.

What? What have I?...

Her fingers close around his hospital-gown-clad cock. If he could, he would scream with joy at the feeling.

His cock is erect. It is the first thing his body has done beyond breathing and moving blood about and passing pee and shit in five years.

He can feel her hand trembling on him. "F-Fred. I really hope you don't mind that I'm doing this."

NO, YOU SILLY WOMAN, OF COURSE I DON'T MIND!

She gasps again and lets him loose and if he could groan in frustration he would, because now he's got no way of telling her just how amazingly, beautifully good it felt to have her hand grasping...

"F-F-Fred..." She reaches under his gown now, taking firm hold of him and OH, MERLIN... "Can you make.... make your p-penis jump like that on purpose?"

IF YOU KEEP HOLDING MY PRIVATES IN YOUR BLOODY AMAZING HAND LIKE THAT I'LL LIFT THE HIMALYAS ON MY FUCKING NOSE, SUSAN BONES, MERLIN!

What she lets loose now isn't a gasp, it's a sort of sobbing laugh. "Oh, Merlin, I didn't... Oh, Fred, are you?... Can you make it pulse like that twice?" Unthinking, she's running her fist up and down the length of him.

TO THE MOON AND BACK AGAIN.

She looks like Ginny when she knows she's got you cornered three ways to Sunday--utterly victorious. "Great! Oh, Fred, this is so!... Oh!" She kisses him again, her tits against him, her hand tight on his prick. For a man who hasn't moved in five years, Fred is feeling pretty fucking great himself. When she breaks from the kiss, she has the sort of calculating look that Hermione used to get when the wheels were clicking. "Fred... I'm going to ask you some questions, all right? Give me one pulse for no, two for yes, just like a kid's code. Okay?"

Fred focuses on the texture of her fingers against his shaft and pulses twice--YES.

She grins as Fred has not seen her grin... ever. "Obviously you can understand me now. "Have you been aware this whole time?"

YES.

"I knew it! Oh, you poor man. But I'll help you, Fred, I swear, I'll help. Are you in pain?"

NO. Well, that was certainly true now, but if she doesn't finish him off...

"Oh, I'm so glad. I think that's been my nightmare, that you were suffering." Her face gets very still suddenly, peering down into his. "Fred... Stupid question, really.... Was it okay that I kissed you this afternoon?"

YES. YES!

Her eyes widen. "Did you like it?"

_YES_!

"Oh! Thank..." A funny look comes over her face, sexy but unsure. She begins to move her hand more assuredly up and down his cock. "Can... can you feel what I'm doing with my hand?"

Oh, YES.

"Do you mind that I'm doing it?"

NO! Silly woman! Do I look like a fool as well as a bloody doormat?

Swallowing deeply, her face at war with itself, she forces herself along the obvious track. "Does it feel good?"

YESYESYES!

With a trembling hand she reaches out to touch his cheek. "Would you like to?... Fred, I haven't... If you've actually heard what I've said..."

YES.

She whimpers. "I haven't, um, been close to a man in a long time. Bloody hell, how am I going to explain how I'm communicating to you with the Head Healer? Fred. Fred." She closes her eyes and rests her head on his chest, her hand continuing to stroke away. "Can?... May I please have you inside of me?"

YES.

She lets loose an exultant bark of laughter. "Merlin, this is so odd, if you only knew... The last year and a half I've had this stupid fantasy... Too many damned romance novels, but... Fred, I'm going to have to let go of you for a minute or two. Don't be nervous. I'm still here."

She lets go of him, and it feels as if all of the light has gone out of the world. He hears her mutter some incantations. Silencing charms? Then there's a quiet rustling sound... What the hell is she?...

When she appears once again in his vision, he can see that she isn't wearing her uniform. Bloody hell. What he wouldn't give for eyes that _focused_.

Suddenly her grip is right back around his rod. It had begun to soften, but now it is rocklike again in her smooth hand. "Can you see me when I'm in front of you?"

YES.

"If I lift you up, would you like to be able to see me a bit more?"

YES! _Please_!

One-handed, she manages to prop him up in the bed--not quite sitting, but no longer flat on his back either. For the first time since he came here, he can see her neck, her shoulders. The round, pink breasts he has been fantasizing about devouring ever since she began to care for him--since the first DA meeting. "Fred, are you sure you want this?"

YESSSSSSS!

Climbing up onto the bed, she grins. "You're quite the conversationalist, Fred." She leans forward and he can feel the heavy weight of her tits against him. "You have me wet and ready." Giddily, he realizes that he can, in fact, smell her excitement. "Do you want me to fuck you?"

YESYESYESYESYESYESYES...

She lowers himself onto him, shuddering as his cock presses past her lips and squeezes up into her. She lets out a wordless cry.

YES.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW, if you're wondering why you were glad that aberforths_rug looked this over... My original ending didn't include the 'one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea' code, and was largely from Susan's point of view. She pointed out that that was, essentially rape, which both she and I agreed was not on. :-D
> 
> Oh, and.... sorry for once again stealing an ending from James Joyce.
> 
> Again, thanks! As always, I'd love your feedback!


	7. How

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new arrival with an old name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta!

_30 April, 2004_

Folded together at their shoulders like an A-frame ladder, they continue their little two-step. "You look amazingly relaxed," Harry says, flicking a sweat-blackened strand of red hair from her forehead.

"No other choice," she says, smiling dreamily.

His hip is aching but he feels as if he has no right to complain. Amazing how even moments like this have been infected by the stain of Tom's actions. "I love you," he murmurs. She is leaning against him, lending him almost her full weight.

"'Mnot asleep. You always try to sneak that in when you think I'm asleep"

Caught me, he thinks. Together almost eight years, married almost four, and I'm still afraid. Sighing, Harry begins to rock Ginny again, back and forth. "You did fall asleep a few times there. How did you manage?..."

Suddenly, Ginny's face reddens and she lets out a howl. When Harry freezes for a moment, trying to decide whether to move her to the bed, she yells, "Keep moving, Harry, you bastard, keep me bloody _MOVING!_ " Her nails dig into his shoulders. Again, he doesn't feel he has any right to complain.

"Shh... I've got you," he murmurs as soothingly as he can. He can feel her cannon ball of a belly against his own, rigid as he continues to lead her through their two-step. "You're doing great, Gin."

" _You try passing one of Trelawney's bloody crystal balls out of your bottom and see if you feel GREAT!_ "

A familiar, warm face appears at the door. "I recognize that pitch! Sounds like you're getting there, Ginny," says Susan Bones, entering the birthing room in her green Healer's robes.

Ginny begins to cry.

"How frequent are the contractions, Harry?" Susan taps her wand on the painting of irises that doubles as a monitor for Ginny and Jane's condition.

"Still every three and a half minutes, but they're a lot stronger and they seem to last almost two minutes before dropping off."

Still rocking and swaying against Harry's shoulder, Ginny lets out an inchoate growl, then begins to weep onto the sweatshirt that was all that Harry could think to jump into before they came to St. Mungo's.

"Hmm," Susan mutters, looking at a long, squiggly line on the monitor. "Doubled contractions. You never did things the slow and patient way, did you, Ginny?" Susan grins, gently touching Ginny's back.

"Bloody Hufflepuff!" Ginny splutters through her tears. "Get me Nona!" Having passed through a brief trough, Ginny is hit by a second wave of contraction.

"Healer Nesaentz is just next..."

" _SUSAN, IF YOU DON'T GET THE BLOODY HEALER IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW, I'LL HEX YOUR BLOODY HEAD OFF!_ "

Susan nods and grins at Harry. "That sounds like my cue; I'll bring her right back"

" _DON'T LEAVE ME, SUSAN, DON'T LEAVE ME!_ " screams Ginny. Harry can see that the skin of her scalp is almost purple.

"I'll be right back with your Birthing Healer, Ginny. Don't worry," Susan says. "Then I'll stay right here through the delivery, I promise. I won't leave you. Now Harry will take care of you while I pop next door." She murmurs, so that only Harry can hear, "And here I was so pleased to be on a happy ward for a change!"

Harry mouths, "Thanks!" and Susan leaves with a wink.

" _Don' t leave me, Harry, oh, Merlin, don't leave!_ " Ginny sobs convulsively. Harry can feel that her belly has begun to release slightly; the contraction is almost over. Once again she collapses against him, her legs almost giving out. "Oh, Merlin, Harry..." she says, groggily.

"I'm not going anywhere, Gin." They continue to sway and step. "You awake?"

Her face is slack against his shoulder, still mottled red but sublimely beautiful. She manages to murmur, "Wake."

"I love you."

***

An hour and a half later, Ginny is on her side, Jane suckling at her breast very happily. Ginny's face is tranquil, transcendently at ease.

Sitting beside them, Harry gazes at them, at Jane's strawberry-and-jet-streaked hair. "She looks like she couldn't decide which side to take after." Gently, he runs a finger through her fine down.

"I can tell you who she takes after, hair-wise: Tonks." Her fingers meet his on their daughter's two-tone head.

He has a family. For the first time since he was one year old, he has a family. He wants to run to the top of St. Mungo's and scream it from the rooftop. He is just about to climb up on the bed instead and collapse beside Jane and Ginny when a quiet cough sounds from the door.

Without taking her eyes from Harry's, Ginny says, "Come in, Susan."

Harry turns to see their Healer friend standing in the doorway looking unaccustomedly timid. She steps just inside the door. "Harry, Ginny, I'm so sorry to intrude, I know this is a very special time."

"You're not intruding, Susan," Ginny murmurs, flashing a somewhat lower-powered smile, very slowly shifting herself up to a sitting posture. "Harry, could you hand Jane to me?"

His stomach plummeting, Harry splutters, "I... But..." The baby--she has fallen asleep--seems so tiny, so fragile.

"You won't break her, Harry," his wife teases gently.

"You sure?" Harry asks. Hands unsteady, he picks her up as he has been taught--head in the elbow, hand under her bum, neck supported by the other hand. His daughter. Suddenly he is reluctant to let her go. He blinks at his wife.

"You can hold her for a while," Ginny says, and Harry knows that if Tom Riddle were still alive, the joy coursing through Harry at this moment would have killed the old bugger. This is unlike any happiness he has ever experienced--not greater, not stronger, but _deeper_. Different. Blinking away sudden moisture--since when has he become such a sieve?--he looks up at Susan, who is standing there, hands folded in front of her. _She's_ crying; is it a convention?

"Sorry," Susan says, conjuring a hankie. "The reason I came... Your family are all waiting to come in and meet Jane. It's quite a crowd. But..."

"It's okay if they come in, Susan," Harry says, but then looks at his wife. "Isn't it, Gin?"

As she nods, Harry can see her peering at their friend. "What?"

"Well," Susan burbles, her voice suddenly higher, "there's a member of your family who... He really wants to see Jane, but he couldn't be here with everyone..." She stops, chewing on her lip.

Ginny blinks. "Fred?"

Susan nods, and Harry is suddenly very aware of not wanting to drop his daughter in shock. "I didn't think he'd been off of the Thickey ward in..."

"Six years," Susan finishes, her face pale. "This is the first time. He's just outside. May I?..."

Ginny's eyes and mouth both open wide. Harry nods madly for them both.

As Susan flits outside--and she's not usually a flitter--Harry moves to hand Jane back to Ginny but she shakes her head. "You can show her to him," she says, her smile still broad but a single tear dribbling down the side of her face and into her hair. Is it catching?

There is a scuff of wood on wood. Fred is in a Levitation Chair that brushed the door jam, his pet Jarvey Snivellus on his shoulder. It's been a couple of months since Harry has seen his brother-in-law, and while he is by no means totally recovered, the improvement is remarkable. He is sitting up--a large improvement on its own--and while his left side is clearly still less strong than his right, the exaggerated leer on his face is nowhere near as extreme.

"Been busy, Gin-gin?" Snivellus says; Fred still isn't able to speak entirely on his own to anyone but Susan, who claims to be able to understand him quite well.

"We both have," Ginny says, laying her hand lightly on Harry's bicep, just where Jane's sleeping head is resting. Harry walks forward and shows the baby to Fred.

"Bloody hell," mutters the Jarvey; even the wry smirk gone now, Fred mumbles, "Blahew."

"Would you like to hold her, Fred?" asks Harry.

The blue eyes flash up to him now. "Hell, yes," says the Jarvey.

"I'll help you get your arms ready, sweetheart," Susan mutters, and as she casts an antiseptic charm and shows Fred how to hold his arms Harry looks over to Ginny, who favors him with a toothy grin. She's been telling him for months that Susan is more than Fred's Healer.

Very carefully, Harry lowers Jane into the little cradle that Fred has formed of his arms in his lap. One of Susan's hands is on Fred's weaker arm, ready to aid, to intervene, the other stroking his cheek. "Blahew," Fred says staring down at the tiny bundle. Snivellus is silent.

Harry feels Ginny grab hold of his hand. He squeezes back.

Fred sits there for a full minute, staring down at the baby. When he looks up, Harry sees that he too has joined the Crying Club.

"I'm going to bring her back to Harry, all right, love?" Susan says. "Then we'll get you back upstairs for some rest."

"Hell, yes," Snivellus barks, and Susan gently picks up the baby.

"Give her to Ginny," Harry says, aware that he is trembling.

"Nice work, Potty," says Snivellus as Jane is returned to her mother.

"Thanks, Fred," Harry manages to get out.

"We'll let your family know you're ready to see them," Susan says, and as suddenly as they arrived, they are gone.

Ginny gazes up at him, her eyes bright. "Nice work, Potty."

Harry comes very close to crying again. Instead he smiles. "You were amazing. You are amazing."

Favoring him with a smile that seems to fill the whole room, Ginny sighs. "So are you, love. Thank you."

Harry's eyes begin to fill _again_. "For what? I... I love you." He's been saying that a lot, and it doesn't seem to have lost it's meaning. "I couldn't believe, between the contractions, how relaxed you were."

Her brown eyes lock on his. "You remember the morning of the battle at the Ministry? We were holed up by the Arch, and I was all twitchy, and I asked how you could be so calm? You said it was because you had been born to live that moment, and that you didn't know what was going to happen, but that you knew that whatever was you were supposed to do, you would do it."

Harry nods, remembering that Hermione launched into a nervous diatribe about the dangers of fatalism until Ron quieted her with a kiss. Poor Hermione. Jane.

"That's how I felt, Harry. How I feel. I have no idea what we're going to do with this little creature, but I know we'll do what we're supposed to do." Seeing his solemn face, she laughs. "Come on, Potter, if you can face down Tom Riddle, you can do anything."

He can feel his chin trembling, his stomach quivering. "That was nothing. I feel as if we're leaping off of a cliff into darkness."

Taking her hand from his, she strokes Harry's cheek, which he suddenly realizes is damp. "But it's not dark, is it? Just unknown."

Harry nods.

That radiant grin filling her face and Harry's vision again, Ginny says, "And we're together. So let's leap."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** A/N: Before Hermione's middle name was Jean, it was Jane. Not sure why Jo changed it, but...
> 
> So, this is really the end of the saga — though there's one more story in the series, Tent, it's a parallel to When. Thanks for reading along--and I hope this epilogue wasn't too sniffly.


End file.
